Hostile Territory
by L4TIN-G3CKO
Summary: Shot during an anti-mutant riot, Wolverine wakes up in a war-torn city that seems devoid of human life, until he hears gun-fire in the distance. Caught in a brutal Locust ambush, Delta are in need of a helping hand. Logan/Marcus slash. EDIT Nov 2012: Sequel up!
1. Insertion

**Disclaimer: I don't own the X-men, Wolverine or Gears of War.**

He rolls over and groans quietly, clutching his head with one hand and climbing to his feet with the aid of the other. He stands for a moment, until the pounding in his head has died away and then begins to take stock of his surroundings with a cautious gaze.

No windows. And more than a few kicked-in doors or missing walls whose neighbours bear the scorch marks of grenades. Sand bags, wrecked cars that bear no resemblance to the ones he is used to and cement barriers fill the detritus-strewn streets and bullet holes riddle every vertical surface in sight, the stench of gunpowder is old but still strong enough to make him wince, partly in recall and partly at the burn in his nostrils. He is no stranger to war, even wars that leave entire nations like this but he knows that there isn't a town or city like this on Earth. Maybe ones similar, with sand or harsh desert air blowing through the streets, but in temperate climes? Not one.

A flurry of sound somewhere behind him sends him to cover and from behind the block of cement he quickly pinpoints it as two, maybe three creatures, moving in a somewhat similar fashion to apes, and heading down through the building he's now opposite. A breeze trails past and he catches a strange acrid scent before the creatures reach ground floor and head outside, straight in his direction. He grimaces, he's no idea where he is (but he's trying hard not to think about that) and he has no idea what he's about to encounter but he _does_ have a sneaking suspicion that they aren't friendly.

With a scuttle and dash of speed the creatures rush his barricade, he pops his claws as they come and rises to tear into first being in half with ease, intestines spilling out over his fists as he rams both sets of blades into the thing's gut only to rip them back out, spin and decapitate the creature trying to attack him from behind before flicking his hand just_ so_ when the last of the things lunges for him, slitting it's throat open and nearly leaving it in the same headless state as its companion.

Scowling and wiping blood on his trousers he turns to face the street and stares down it as he lets his senses collect whatever information there is to be found. Then, satisfied that no more of the scuttlers are going to appear out of the woodwork he heads down the road, sliding from shadow to shadow like a hunting cat, going straight towards the faint, timorous sounds of a distant gunfight and human voices.

Thoughts plague his every step, worry over where he is when everything is similar to what he knows exists but not quite the same, and concern for the teammates he knows were still fighting a pitched battle when he was taken out of action by a sniper shot. By a sniper…

He remembers sprinting out of the alleyway, able to see the glint of sun-on-scope and the deeper shadow of the sniper's head; remembers the sight of the children - so young - huddled behind a car in an attempt to hide from the violence all around them, remembers noticing in subdued righteous fury that one was an obvious mutant with faintly glowing purple veins showing through her pale skin and the other was a year or so younger, as human-looking as any other, and still a target for the rampaging anti-mutant militants rioting through the city.

The sound he doesn't remember though, but then again you never hear the shot that kills you and he should know, he's been 'killed' often enough. The impact however, that he can still recall, not the pain, because although he knows it was there his memory, as fickle as always, never holds on to the feel of pain, of a pellet of lead splitting skin and blasting through flesh only to erupt out the other side taking most of his heart with it. The shrill sound of a girl screaming, the muffled noises of a young lad who should never see these things, let alone at his age, crying in fear and shock, they echo alongside the impact, replace the retort of the gun.

He realises with a jolt that the boy had blond hair, that the girl he was hiding with was his sister, that they were the siblings who, in part, were the cause for this, the latest brutal display of hate by the militant, dangerous mobs of mutant-haters. The pictures shown during the briefing had been nothing special, not compared to what he saw on a daily basis but the words, the words come back to him laden with the kind of _knowing_ that could drive some men mad.

Name, age and all that, he'd skipped through because that was the boring stuff, the interesting information was always on the second page, that was the stuff worth reading: teleporter. Inter-dimensional travel, only exhibited twice and only on small inanimate objects posing a threat (see Cerebro files for details), not deemed able to teleport large or living things. Target dimension and location unknown, likely possibilities within Shi'ar border space: C17 deep-space quadrants, C27 warp quadrant X7, L04 deep-space quadrants. Energy traces traceable but all conclusions (aforementioned extrapolations included) to be deemed negligible due to lack of reliable data.

Lost. He is lost in the vastness of space, stranded on a planet that even the Shi'ar don't know of, in the areas of the void that even they don't know about, have only skirted the edges of. The prospect of never getting home, of never seeing the mansion and al its inhabitants again, rears its ugly head and it was only through an immense effort that Logan forces himself back to the real issue at hand: there are humans, or something remarkably similar, miles up ahead and in the middle of war the likes of which he hasn't seen in years.

A flicker of adrenalin slips through his veins at that idea and he can't help but grin, a strange action for one heading to war, but he's always had combat down as one of those acquired tastes. Black boots pounding almost silently on the cracked road Logan speeds towards the firefight in the distance, old habits reawakening and newer ones falling to the side, being left to join the stirring dust in his wake.

Marcus swears repeatedly as he hears the emergence hole grow behind them, leaving him and his squad surrounded on almost all sides by Locust, not to mention the rapidly approaching dusk that will spell doom for them if they don't reach somewhere safe and well-lit before the krill come out to feed. He unloads another magazine and drops to his knees to reload as Dom steps up to cover him for the necessary seconds. The clunk of the bolt slotting another bullet into the chamber brings him back up to carry on trying to repel the Locust, to fight them off and earn the time needed to get to the LZ for a ride home. Baird keeps his tirade up even as he swings a frag grenade and sends it arcing into one of the E-holes. The muffled explosion is followed by the rumble of the earth crumpling in on itself as the tunnel mouth seals itself.

The closure buys them a few minutes respite, a lessened flow of enemies for long enough that Marcus can start to feel a little annoyed at Baird's constant stream of rapid-fire verbal trash. Then the moment is gone and this time it's two E-holes that split the ground, the tremors rattling the steel frame of the street light in the centre of their circle of barricades. Locust spew forth like vomit from a drunkard and even Cole's normal cheerful attitude is dwindling in the face of the odds Delta squad is facing.

Cole is forced to duck behind a barrier for a minute, blood spattering on the ground from the wound on his arm, a lasting sign that he was almost hit, almost lost his right arm entirely to a Locust bullet. Marcus sees him out of the corner of his eye and then realises that Baird hasn't, that they are now open to attack from behind now that their sole rear-guard is down for the while. He would turn around and take the position himself but the majority of the Locust are facing him, Dom and Baird and the moment he stops firing ahead they could easily be overrun. His shoulder blades prickle with the knowledge that any second now a Locust drone will empty it's Hammerburst into his back and armour be damned, he'll die just like every other Gear who's been caught out like this. The growing roar seals their fate, the Locust vocalising their victory already, the fall of one of the COG's best squads almost certain.

The bullet to the back never comes. He doesn't realise this immediately, it's when the E-holes have all been closed and the Locust all shot down, that's when he notices that Cole still leaning against the concrete trying to stop the score across his arm, the bullet just grazed him but it bit deep, from bleeding too much. With an analytical eye, procrastinating in the time it takes for Dom and Baird to notice something's out of sorts, Marcus tallies up the number of Locust dead, how many the three of them could have killed after Cole went down and only then does he turn around to face their rear.

The man straightens up from plundering the Locust corpses for ammo for the looted Lancer he has in turn looted from them. Blood covers him and it's with some confusion that Marcus identifies most prevalent the cause of death as what appear to be knife wounds, disembowelment and decapitation, lost limbs and even more bizarrely: shredded guns, Hammerbursts and shotguns turned into scrap metal. He finds his voice before either Dom or Baird, now also taking in the strange panorama for themselves, can say a word.

"Who are you? Stranded?" At the sharp words the man grins sharply, his hands, one holding the Lancer with impossible ease, hanging loosely at his sides.

"I'm lost, yeah." He chuckles and it's more than slightly self-deprecating, "name's Logan, heard the fight from back down there," he waves a hand back towards the road at his back, "thought I'd come help out, seeing as I was in the area."

Marcus nods towards the strewn-about corpses. "You seem pretty good at killing Locust. You an ex-Gear, ex-con?" Logan lifts an eyebrow and tilts his head.

"Locust? That what you call these bastards?"

Baird butts in, "do you not even know what Locust are? What kind of idiot are you?" Logan doesn't stop grinning but his gaze becomes assessing.

"Like I said, I'm lost, well out of familiar turf here. Still, if you need some help I'm happy to provide, that's if you can point me in the direction of whatever passes for civilisation 'round here."

"What kind of help are you going to be if you didn't even know what Locust are?" Baird snaps, too stressed out after the long fight to be even remotely approaching polite. Logan doesn't seem to care much, he just shrugs.

"He killed most of them Baird, and shot down a fair few of the ones coming at us, why do you think we didn't all die when Cole went down?" Dom provides a little logic and Cole laughs at Baird' harassed expression.

"You think I could stop the grubs killing you from down here, baby? Thought you was cleverer than that!"

Marcus cuts the banter off before Baird gets too worked up. "We're heading to a LZ a few miles north-east of here, the Locust ambushed us because it's one of the few safe ones left and they knew we'd be passing through here. If you want to get a lift back to Jacinto with us, we could use the extra fire-power to get there." Marcus doesn't say please, he makes no real hint as to how hard the journey will be but by way Logan stops grinning and slings the Lancer's strap over his shoulder, he already knows it won't be an easy trip.

"Deal." He walks over to them and maybe it was the distance, maybe it's a side-effect of Logan's posture –confidence but no arrogance- but Marcus is surprised to see that he doesn't even reach Baird's height, instead only coming to about 5ft 4". Baird opens his mouth to make a comment about his short stature but from bullet holes in Logan's black clothes and the gaping, bloody hole in his shirt over his heart, to his smooth movements and the sheer mass of muscle he possesses, he pieces together the clues and decides, wisely, to not say anything that might irritate him for now.

Dom takes the lead and begins making introductions, "I'm Corporal Dominic Santiago, this," he gestures towards Marcus, "is Sergeant Marcus Fenix, Augustus 'The Cole Train' Cole and Damon Baird." Logan nods.

"Logan, most people call me Wolverine though." He doesn't elaborate or provide them with a surname and Marcus tags him as an ex-convict, one not too dissimilar to those he encountered during his time in The Slab. With a shake of his head he shunts aside all thoughts of origins and prisons and decides quickly on a route for them to take to the LZ.

"Let's head out." He orders and somewhat to his surprise, Logan obeys with the air of someone used to the military way of life.

They take the northern road away from the ambush site, hoping to keep the journey as short as possible, no-one says much because the ambush has set the tone of this little jaunt, even a new addition to the party who is as much an enigma as the whys and wherefores behind the Locust. The roads leading away from the ambush are the same as those leading up to it were but every skitter of old paper in the wind and rustle of plastic caught under sand bags is the call sign of the Locust, the warning signal of another horde of enemies coming to overrun them.

Baird gets twitchy, Cole just barrels on like always and Dom just steels himself for whatever might be around each and every corner. Marcus though, he watches Logan in the hopes that he will display some habit, some predisposition that will tell Marcus where he is from, what he has done, who he is because Marcus doesn't believe him when he says he 'is lost.' His observance is rewarded with nothing but a slight, niggling sense of familiarity and a faint unease that he locks up tight with all the other unwanted mental distractions.


	2. Intel

Logan can feel the sergeant watching him; he doesn't have to see it because with his senses, with his innate paranoia, he knows when someone is watching him to an uncanny degree of accuracy that has earned it the unofficial categorisation among the X-Men of 'Logan's sixth sense.' He knows is story of being lost, his vague information will make any decent commanding officer suspicious but this one seems to know that he's more than just an escaped convict or deserter with an identity to hide. But seeing as the man seems to bear the subtle signs of having been locked up himself, Logan figures he probably would be able to tell that something was being left untold.

The blond guy keeps staring too, but not because of any concerns about his backstory, all Logan can see is jealousy and a tinge of fear. He doesn't bother to try and figure out the source of the emotions, from Blondie's words behaviour earlier, it'll probably come out of its own accord as soon as they have a quiet minute in which the now-second shortest member of the squad can think properly and stew over whatever insecurities and irritations he's got stored away. The other two focus more on moving without creating too much noise or letting any possible signs of an enemy presence escape their notice and Logan mentally thanks them for that, he can only put up with so much attention before the urge to hit someone gets to be too much to resist.

Not that anything escapes his own eagle eyes, in fact he knows he's seeing more than the rest of them put together. The breeze is coming straight at them and with it come sounds and scents, the acrid scent of the Locust is a constant, as are the odours of humanity, gunpowder and machine-gun oil. The freshness varies, he's fairly positive that there were Locust through here sometime recently, humans too and possibly a dog or two, wild or not he couldn't tell without focusing. The air reverberates softly with the echoes of sounds.

"Stop." The squad do, instinctively obeying the inherent command, even Marcus comes to an abrupt halt. "Locust, up north, not that far away but we keep going this way and that ambush will look like a cosy little tea-party." As he guessed, Blondie takes immediate offense at him knowing such things.

"How do you know? Are you psychic or something? The aliens from outer space talking to you?" Logan inwardly smirks at that, yes, they have done previously, and technically he's an alien here himself, the irony is a little hard to ignore.

"Nah, I can just tell."

"Oh, you really expect us to believe that? Break out of the loony bin, did you?" Blondie squares up and Logan narrows his eyes.

"I'm a tracker, I have to be able to see these things."

"We can all track, Logan, but there aren't any recent signs of Locust through here." Dom provides a counterpoint to Blondie's angry words and the chill to the tone is a warning to them both: to Logan to not even think about lying and to Blondie to stop trying to pick a fight.

"Heh, I doubt you're as good as me, Santiago. I've tracked lone men over mountain ranges, through forests and cities and even across deserts and barren plains for days on end and never lost a trail. Trust me on this one, there's Locust up ahead."

He catches Marcus's eyes and doesn't blink, even he won't be able to stop the four of them dying if they walk straight into the veritable army waiting for them and he needs the sergeant to understand that they need to take an alternate route without knowing for sure why they need to.

"Then which way should we go?" Marcus asks. Logan breathes in before answering.

"We head east now and cut back north later, but if we're too slow it'll be no use anyway, they're spreading out across the area. Obviously want you dead pretty bad."

"Shit." Marcus pauses, planning ahead for that eventuality and then nods before he leads the squad onwards to the next eastern turn-off from the main road. Logan falls in just behind him, wanting to get wind of anymore unpleasant surprises early and before the scents and sounds of his travelling companions can cover any traces but nothing rings his alarm bells and the most significant event is the discovery of a cache of ammo inside the burned-out wreck of a car, the remnants of a child's toy still hanging from the back of the driver's seat. Logan tries not to breathe too deeply then, because the ash drifting around isn't burned paper and that's one smell that he knows from experience will take months to fade.

It's miles until the scenery starts to change from the streets through the towering blocks of flats to wider, more open expanses of land, larger houses with gardens both front and back, small parks and ornate benches rapidly become commonplace. It's no stretch of logic to say that beyond these ostentatious displays of superior wealth there is a city centre, complete with a square or other patch of level ground safe for a helicopter to get in to pick them up. The one doubt Logan has about the plan is whether they'll be able to make it there by nightfall and in one piece.

And nightfall proves to be more of a problem than he thought. As dusk draws closer, at a slower pace than he's used to, the squad grows tenser, more paranoid and as the light begins to show the faintest signs of dimming, Marcus has them find an estate of smaller houses and orders them to split up, him and Logan, Dom and then Cole and Baird, and search as many houses as they can for one with still-working lights and also for as many propane tanks as they can find. Logan doesn't as much as blink at the thought of being alone with the stone-faced sergeant for any length of time.

"Why Wolverine?" Marcus waits until they're in a house, flicking switches and far out of the others' range of hearing. To his surprise, Logan's mouth quirks into a bitter smile and he has to wonder if any of the emotions he'd seen earlier were at all genuine after seeing the raw, professional self-loathing he's seen on killers from The Slab and some of the finest soldiers he's ever known.

"Because I'm short, bad tempered and the most dangerous son of a bitch you'll ever meet. Fucking hard to kill too." The words would seem light hearted if not for that smile and the rumble of suppressed rage shadowing them.

"You've done this before, haven't you." It's not a question, not when Logan's treading through the corridors like a trained scout in hostile environs.

Logan gives him an answer anyway. "In this war? No. Hell, I hadn't killed a single Locust until today, but I've been in more wars than I can count." Marcus says nothing, just mulls over the information, everyone on Sera who's still alive knows what the Locust are and most of the population have killed more than one in their lifetime, no matter how young and to have seen many wars? The Pendulum Wars and the current one with the Locust are the only conflicts to have any participants left alive, the rest were far too long ago for this small, strange little man to have been in, or anyone else for that matter.

"Where did you come from?" Not what town, not what city, which country? Just 'where?' Logan stops and turns to look at Marcus properly, Marcus stares back using his best Fenix look, he won't let Logan get away with vague inferences this time. The shorter man just sighs and looks back down the dark corridor.

"Too damn far away."

"_Where?"_

"Nowhere you know. I got dropped here by an inter-dimensional teleporter." The nonsense he spouts immediately annoys Marcus, he thought this man would be someone worthy of a little respect but now this?

"Stop lying, where the hell did you come from?" He hefts his Lancer, a note of warning entering his body language – he will not be lied to, not when his squad could be endangered by it.

"I just told you, teleporter." Logan pins Marcus with a bland stare that stops him from trying to force some real answers out. "I work as part of a team back home, see we're the same species as you, but some of us have a few different genes. Genes that make us mutants and give us various abilities. I've known telepaths, telekinetics, people who turn into steel and people who can see the future. But the humans without those genes, some of them hate us enough that they would kill us all." There's a stream of buried emotion, memories flicker across Logan's face and Marcus lets him carry on, half-wanting to believe in it all.

"There's millions of mutants on Earth and they'd kill us all. And then there's the mutants who want to kill or subjugate all the normal humans, it's a mess. The X-Men, the team I work with, we try to keep the peace, stop any mutants from killing people and stop the normal humans from trying to kill the mutants. That's what was happening when I got sent here, there were a load of militants on an anti-mutant protest that went violent and I took a bullet for these two mutant kids that were hiding behind a car to try and stay safe. One of them was the teleporter, no-one knew exactly how powerful she was, we didn't think she would be able to move anything large or alive. Then I got shot right in front of her and next thing I wake up over here with a splitting headache and no goddamn idea where I am."

"Do you really expect me to believe that?" Marcus asks, quietly, coldly.

Logan takes one hand off his Lancer and runs his fingers through his hair in obvious frustration. He doesn't say anything for a handful of long, drawn out minutes. "I'm going to have to, aren't I?"

Marcus lets his Lancer drop a bit, enough to signal a willingness to believe, or trust Logan, at least. Logan follows his lead and then steps out into the next corridor in search of a working light switch. In near silence the two of them go pack to combing the building for working light switches or propane tanks until Dom's voice crackles into life in Marcus' earpiece.

"Found a place with power, couple of tanks too, just over the road from you two."

"We'll meet you there." Marcus replies, with a gesture towards Logan he turns around to retrace his steps back to the way out, purposely giving the other man a chance to panic and gun him down. He can't help but feel a little pleased when all he hears is bizarrely soft footsteps and a snort of laughter. It's only when they're on their way across the street, in clear view of Dom, waiting inside the front door of the house that Logan says anything else.

"Just so's you know: I prefer blades to guns." Then, with an arrogant, amused wink, he slings his Lancer back and walks on by. Marcus lets him go ahead and spends the extra seconds alone trying to wrap his head around the fact that he suspects Logan may've been telling the truth, let alone what that would entail. Baird's earlier comment about aliens comes back to him and he lets his lips assume a faint smirk. If only he knew.


	3. Lunacy

Logan steps into the house and tries not to think about its previous inhabitants, people who'd lived there for so long that he can still pick up their scents clearly enough to know that the woman had a favourite perfume, the man sat at the head of the dining table and the girl had a leather bag, probably for school, that she always left on the table just to the side of the kitchen door. The kitchen is the worst and the best room in the house, he decides, too many food-related smells to be as… personal, as the rest of the building, but the traces in the room summon images of a mother, cooking and laughing with her daughter, of a home that was more than just a place to sleep and eat.

The pot of salt-substitute on the work top gives him idea and as Blondie and Cole stroll in, he opens cupboards and begins digging through the products filling the shelves. The salt is soon joined by bleach, Vaseline and a pot of pure wax polish, then a steel mixing bowl and a bottle of lighter fuel. He can't help but grin, he's noticed the strange grenades the other are carrying but this, this is more fun. He finds some old cables in the back of what was obviously the last haven for the man's dead gadgets and jury rigs the wiring needed to get the fridge-freezer and the oven working again. Cole vanishes, talking about food, Blondie however stays.

It's about half an hour until he's done with the first stage and the bowl of boiled bleach and salt is cooling down in the freezer. Done for the next hour or so, Logan wanders back into the front room where the others, Blondie excluded, are all sitting around an electric light. The sounds from outside draw his attention away though, and looking out into the darkness, he sees what's causing them: bats. Then he amends his statement as one careens into the room and then tries to back-track away from the light and hits the wall hard enough to break its wings.

It's small, yes, but bearing a resemblance to the Locust and too many sharp teeth to be any kind of bat he's ever seen.

"Kryll." Dom supplies from behind him.

"What?"

"They only come out at night because UV kills them but they kill anything, shred people in seconds, or Locust. They're cannibals too." Logan looks back at the struggling little thing shrieking by the low wall.

"Damn, that's fucking creepy." He says. Cole laughs and then silence falls back into place, the constant whir and murmur of the krill outside creating a constant level of white noise that's difficult to ignore. After a while Logan returns to the kitchen, Baird keeps watching him as he returns to what he was doing and doesn't stop watching until the night is fading and Logan is ramming the finished product into the woman's left-behind collection of perfume bottles and topping them up with the lighter fuel. With careful use of a knife borrowed off Blondie and some dried-out yarn and cut-up leather jackets pillaged from the upstairs rooms, he gives the homemade grenades fuses and a bandolier of sorts gives them a home dangling from straps of leather slung over his chest.

"Nice, but do they work?" Blondie asks snidely.

Filching a pack of matches and two lighters from a drawer, Logan smirks. "If they don't, it makes no difference to me, Blondie."

Blondie scowls as they exit the kitchen and head over to join the rest of Delta squad in getting ready to head out again as soon as the kryll are back underground. In no time at all the sun sends tendrils of light over the rooftops and the black swarms that dominated the air vanish, streaming away down open manholes and into any dark space that will last the duration of the day. As the light bleaches the sky white-blue, Delta squad leave their night haven and resume the trek east. Logan retakes his post towards the front and if Marcus is bothered, he doesn't show it leaving Logan to focus on gauging just how far the Locust have spread since he was last tracking their movements.

The wind is dead, the air too still to carry sound or scent to him but judging by what lingers in the stillness, nothing much has changed. Factoring in Dom's comment about the kryll being cannibals, Logan settles on holding his peace until he can get more information. It's as quiet a trip as the last day's and with little to really occupy his mind Logan turns to observing the landscape around him, tallying up what he's already seen to build up a guesswork image of what differs between his homeworld and this war-torn land. Cars, architecture, the linear trend of the street network, they are all close enough to lull him into forgetting where he is but at the same time different enough to stir up a nagging sense of paranoia.

The sun follows its curve through the sky and is past its zenith when Marcus announces that they need to head north or miss the LZ. Logan doesn't protest, despite the sergeant's querying glance, and they take a turn out of the residential estates into what must have been the financial area of the city before the war. Lost in the shadows of the ruined skyscrapers they keep to the streets for the most part, taking bypasses through knocked down walls in buildings when rubble and barricades of wrecked cars make the roads impassable. The tall canyons of concrete funnel the air and it's with a hint of relief that Logan returns to parsing the scents and sounds of the city ahead and around them in search of the Locust.

Marcus is keenly aware of how Logan keeps to the front of the squad but doesn't comment; also aware of the man's professed skills as a tracker and how he might want to catch any traces of Locust before the squad's passage removes them from the streets. He says nothing and concentrates on keeping them on course towards the LZ, another night in the city would be pushing their luck, especially this close to the city centre. The skyscrapers fall to the wayside eventually and it's a blessing to Marcus, all those empty windows just waiting for a willing sniper… The more open routes into the city centre are more dangerous in terms of Locust presence but a more even fighting ground.

"Damn." Marcus looks back at Logan.

"What?" The man frowns, but keeps looking around even as he answers the question.

"Just felt some weird tremor, like there was subsidence nearby but if there was there'd be aftershocks, it wouldn't just stop and start…" He trails off, preoccupied with pinpointing the tremor's epicentre.

"E-hole." Marcus supplies, "the holes the Locust come out of, they just open them up wherever." Logan nods as he assimilates the information.

"Bad news then, it came from straight up ahead." Marcus doesn't allow Baird time to question Logan's veracity, not this time, he just turns back around and keeps leading them forwards until he sees the street he's looking for: a broad strip of asphalt leading to a square ringed by pillars but with an old garden feature in the middle, one made of blocks of concrete turned into rectangular flowerbeds and perfect cover if there's going to be another staged firefight.

They pick up the pace as the noise of the Locust reaches their ears and reach the square in time for Cole to tag the odd pillar with a grenade before taking cover behind one of the flower blocks along with the rest of them. Crouching, shoulders pressed to cold concrete, in the middle of a forest of pillars they wait anxiously, fully conscious of the fact that one this group of Locust finds them, E-holes will open up all around them and there will be no avenue of escape.

Lancers resting on the tops of the blocks, Delta await the enemy and they don't have to wait for long. Drones appear amidst the pillars and their shouts echo off the bare stone. Two explosions reduce their numbers but some of the grenades are missed and the group that encircle Delta is still sizable. Logan fires first out of the Gears and as Marcus looks over the edge of the flower beds to start firing himself he sees tow Locust downed, with blood and brain matter staining the pillars behind them. Headshots, blind-fired. Baird and Cole start firing from the rear and then there is gunfire on all sides.

Marcus takes out two Drones in the first minute, as he rapidly picks out his next target to his left he hears Logan's Lancer run dry but instead of dropping down to reload the man lets the gun hang on its strap, plucks a bottle from his makeshift bandolier and lights the cotton trailing from the stuffed bottle neck. He throws it smoothly and when it explodes the blast is bigger than Marcus expected, big enough to take out a huddle of four Locust while Logan finally takes the time to reload. Dom whistles appreciatively as he himself guns down a grub.

The fight continues and Marcus stops thinking about anything but the gun in his hands and the enemies facing him. Both standard frag grenades and Logan's improvised concussives ease the pressure but with the E-holes all out of sight and due to remain open for the foreseeable future the battle shows no signs of ending.

"Shit." Marcus ducks down to reload only to pause on his way back up. "_Shit."_ The roar of the Berserker is warped by the pillars and stone but still unmistakeable.

"Was that a fucking Berserker?" Baird shouts back.

"Yeah, anyone got a Hammer of Dawn control on them?" Dom responds.

"No! If I had I'd have used it by now, moron!" Comes Baird's stressed reply.

"What the fuck is a berserker?" Logan asks Marcus, his voice rougher than usual, joining him under cover to reload safely.

"Female Locust, massive, blind and fucking angry. The only thing we've been able to kill one with is the Hammer of Dawn and we don't have one of them right now." The sergeant stands up and rattles of half of his magazine into the now-panicked Locust. They scatter, just before he hears the crunching of the pillars breaking apart as the Berserker rams through them. The Drones vanish completely and Baird and Cole have time enough to join them in the section of garden facing the front of the square as the oncoming behemoth erupts into the space and roars again. A sound not unlike the growling of a rabid dog Marcus once put down rings in his ear and then Logan is gone.

The Berserker staggers and it's because Logan's hammering his fists into its scaled head. Dom mutters something under his breath as the monster swipes at the man clinging to its head and sends Logan flying into a pillar. It breaks under the impact and the berserker stomps over, enraged by the deep cuts in its face, Cole raises his Lancer to fire only to hesitate as Logan dives around the creature, rolls and comes to his feet behind it.

"_Shit." _Marcus swears for a third time as the little man he was interrogating the night before scales the Berserker's back and starts tearing into its shoulders, he can no longer tell whether the howling, rumbling thunder is the Berserker's agonised roar of Logan's and as he watches the Locust beast once again fling the man into a pillar he wonders if Logan's tale of far off planets was entirely out of the question because he won't stop. Red blood flashes in the air and silver glints through in the dust of the toppled pillars.

The monster falls to its knees, one of the joints almost hacked through by the madman savaging the creature and he still doesn't stop. Delta squad watch in a horrified, terrified, awed silence as Logan rends the Berserker into pieces long after its death, blood coating him.

Logan hears it, a challenge screamed at the sky and it's not the first such wild roar he's heard but it grates on him, some note contained in it sets his blood to pounding in his ears and as he drops down besides Marcus to ask what the hell he's talking about all he can think of is dismembering whatever is making that sound. As Marcus tells him what a 'Berserker' is, it's all he can do not to just take off over the flower bed and meet its charge head-on.

_Berserker, huh? You don't know the meaning of the word, bub._

It crashes into the square and he can't help himself, his vision goes red and his mind drifts away behind a sea of rage, he's dimly aware of himself growling back until it howls again and he moves, just leaps the flower bed and lunges for it, touching the ground in front of it and pushing off to propel himself up its torso and to its head. Claws out, he slashes at it, cuts the skin and scales to ribbons and carves deep into the flesh protecting its brain before it bats him away.

The impact doesn't register, neither does the pain of the stone fragments embedded into his flesh or the dust choking his breathing, all he knows is the rage and what has caused it. He waits until the behemoth has reached him and then throws himself past its feet and rolls to his own before digging his claws in deep as he uses them to climb its back where he digs his feet into the lower cuts he's made and lays into the creature's shoulder blades, ripping the muscles and skin apart, grabbing thick cables of muscle with one hand, bracing himself with the claws on the other, shoved deep into the thing's flesh, and biting through them before tugging hard on them and sending the monster into spasms of pain.

He screams his superiority over the sound of its tortured bellows and feels one claw tip strike bone when it swats him off again. This time the feeling of his flesh compacting hard, splitting and haemorrhaging, pierced through with stone, enrages him further, boosts the river of _killkillkill_ to a swollen flood that consumes his existence. He doesn't wait this time, just dashes in again, under its swinging arms and up to rend its thick skin and destroy any organs he can find. He flays the muscle and fat away and then starts in on the organs revealed, decimating them with brutal, uncontrolled precision.

It's a while, covered in shreds of muscle and offal, his throat torn up so badly as to deny him speech and his mouth full of blood, before he regains his senses as the burning tide of bestial hostility empties back into its reservoir and simmers down to a quiet snarl of discontent at the back of his mind. He looks up, orients himself with the square again but doesn't look over towards the centre until he's had time to haul his mind under control and steel himself.


	4. Post Mortem

Marcus stares, not quite able for a moment to relate the beast he just saw demolish a Berserker with the man he saw picking up ammo and searching houses for light sources. Baird summarises what they are all thinking.

"What the fuck was that?"

Marcus debates whether to relay what Logan told him before but the decision is put on hold when Logan steps off the Berserker's carcass and stumbles, falling to his knees for an instant before hauling himself back to standing with visible effort only to be bent over retching up blood and what Marcus is sure is pulverised organs. Ever the compassionate one, Dom steps out from behind the concrete blocks and walks cautiously over to Logan, still vomiting. Marcus signals to Cole and Baird to stay put and then follows, unable to hear Dom talking but watching his lips move as he approaches Logan. By the time he gets to them, Logan is only panting, each breath loud and wet, the gurgle of his lungs too loud for Marcus' liking.

Logan looks up as he arrives, and his grin is closer to a pained grimace than anything with his teeth and tongue indiscernible behind the blood still half-filling his mouth. "Do you believe me now, Fenix?" The words are barely there, shaped whispers of exhaled breath but Marcus nods anyway.

"Yeah, I believe you." Logan grins again and then gags, lifts a hand and sticks two fingers down his throat, the sound of it strangely disturbing, even to Marcus who's seen more than one person try to make themselves throw up or fish something using the same trick. With a ghastly squelch and a gob of blood and tissue that splatters on the ground Logan pulls a long sliver of stone out of his mouth and drops it. Dom passes him a bottle of water and he swishes the first mouthful, spits it out red and thick and then swallows the rest. He straightens up and absent-mindedly rips another sliver of stone out of his side. Marcus meets gazes with Dom for a second, Dom just shakes his head. _You can tell me later._

"Fuck." Logan mutters, a little louder than his last words, "You've no idea how disgusting blood tastes, especially when it's your own and it's because you've been bringing up your own organs for inspection."

Marcus can't help but feel a little ill at that, it's not a concept he's come across before and to be told that he just saw a man throw up his own insides, much less be told that by the man himself? He'd have to be insane not to be disturbed. Dom jerks his head towards the way back to the main road. Marcus shakes his own head, staying overnight near here is risky but less so than trying to make the LZ before nightfall.

He sees Cole decides to come over, dragging Baird with him and holding Logan's Lancer too. He makes his mind up.

"We need to find somewhere to shelter for the night, we can make it to the LZ tomorrow." Cole doesn't look surprised and Baird just scowls that bit harder.

"Fuck that. I'm the only one here who got hurt and I've got hours left in me, there's Locust all over the place-" Logan has to stop to cough and spit out another gob of blood, "we stay in one place for long and that's it, game over."

"Are you insane?" Baird demands, "You should be dead and you want to _keep going_?" Logan looks at him blandly.

"Yeah, that's what I just said isn't it? Besides, I heal quick, I'll be fine in half an hour." Marcus wants to tell him to stop being stupid, alien genetics or not, but he's right, if he's able to move than they need to keep going.

"If you're sure you can keep up then we keep going. Are you?" He asks.

"Yes." Logan tells him. Marcus looks away from the blood covered man, trying to ignore the feeling that by taking his word on it, he'll be killing him.

"Then we keep going, the LZ's not far off and we can make it before nightfall if we leave now."

Dom wants to argue, and so does Cole, Baird's too busy staring at Logan to think about anything other than why the short man is still alive and Logan himself has taken his Lancer back off Cole and is waiting to move out again. Marcus heads down the pathway smashed straight through the pillars and doesn't look back at the people following him.

Logan can feel shards of stone trapped beneath his skin and grating on his bones. He wants to stop and carve them out but he knows that that's not an option, they've got to reach the LZ as soon as they can and if he says anything about stopping, Dom and Cole, compassionate and unwilling to let an injured man go without the rest he needs if they can help it, will use it as proof that he can't keep going. He'd rather fight three of those Berserkers at once than have one of the squad die because they thought he couldn't keep up.

He keeps pace just behind Marcus and tries to ignore the stench of the blood covering him and stay alert for any more Locust or E-holes although the effort is more than it should be It's been a while since he's taken a beating like that; been hurt as much, no, but to take that amount of blunt-impact haemorrhaging damage throughout his entire body, yes. It's healing and fairly quickly too but it's tiring him out mentally. The itch of flesh reknitting at its normal speed can be irritating but when it heals as fast as he does, it's a whole new kind of pain that he's pretty sure no-one else has ever experienced, other than Sabretooth or X-23, and he just wants to curl up in a dark space until it's stopped and every movement doesn't hurt as it stretches new-grown skin and muscle.

He'll be feeling the phantom pains for months.

"Are you alright?" Dom asks, evidently the one who makes sure the squad doesn't self-destruct as the stress builds on missions like this one's turned into. He nods, flashes a red-stained toothy grin at him and turns his attention back to ensuring he keeps placing one foot in front of the other and doesn't let anything hostile slip under his radar, he's the only advance warning these people have and it could save one of their lives.

As the miles slowly crawl by and the sun trails further and further down the sky and towards the rooftops, Logan's muscles become less and less taunt, loosening and slowly adjusting to the strains and pressures of movement as he uses them, well aware that most spends months in physiotherapy 'breaking in' new muscle growth while he just rides out the pain and the resistance of unused tissue until his unique physiology sorts things out. His lungs clear of the last dregs of blood and phlegm, his organs finish flushing out damaged cells and by the time they approach the area directly surrounding the LZ he feels marginally better than he looks, hale and healthy except for the left-over pains of the injures, psychological ghosts that he'll have to endure for a while before they fade away or drown in a sea of new injuries, whichever happens first.

No-one asks the question. No-one comments on the various methods with which an unarmed man might take down a lumbering monolith of aggression like a Berserker, or how a man might be thrown into pillars hard enough to break them and be able to keep pace with healthy men afterwards, or even how a man could weigh enough to break a pillar in the first place. The only words are Marcus's occasional verbal orders, advance warning of easy-to miss turnings onto 'safer roads' to keep their progress as rapid as possible.

Not a single Locust appears on the roads ahead of them, in fact Logan can hear them moving further away from the city centre, like a retreat or evacuation from hostile territory; strange considering the fact that they are the invaders. He listens out for the roar of another Berserker or anything else that could scare the Locust like the one earlier did but the only sounds are those of the normal Locust soldiers heading out of the city.

"Hey, Marcus?" The sergeant looks back at him in fleeting surprise.

"Yeah?"

"Is there a size limit on those E-holes?" Logan asks. Marcus frowns for a second.

"No, why?"

A faint tremor pricks at Logan's ears. "Then could they sink the entire city that way?" He asks, Marcus stops.

"What?" Logan feels kind of sorry for him, this mission just keeps getting stranger and stranger.

"All the Locust are pulling out, heading for the outskirts and I-" This tremor is big enough to be heard, if not felt, a collective city-wide groan of concrete. "I'm picking up on tremors too large to be E-holes."

"Shit." Marcus falls back on his favourite word and then presses a finger to his earpiece. Logan doesn't bother to watch the conversation, he just carries on charting the tremors, mapping out areas and ranges, powers and aftershocks to estimate just how much land is going to go, the concrete of the pavement suddenly buckles and it's the first of chains of quakes strong enough for the rest of Delta to feel.

"Right, we need to get to the top of the library just up the road from here, if there's no Locust around we can use that as an LZ." Marcus announces as he once again begins to lead them onwards, now sticking to the middle of the road, choosing wider streets over more discreet routes. Cracks follow them , encircle them and the asphalt heaves beneath their feet, Logan relies on his superb sense of balance to keep himself upright and reaches out to haul Dom up by one arm when a crack sends him stumbling.

The library appears in front of them across an ornamental garden of winding paths and decorative statues, the rumble of the quakes merge in Logan's ears until all he can hear is one, on-going grind of raw sound that pounds in his ears and makes him wish his senses weren't quite so enhanced. Vaulting over low walls and raised flower beds he can feel the constant sonic assault slowly wearing away at his balance, reverberating in the confines of his adamantium skull and twisting the world around, making the writhing ground flex and crease where it shouldn't even during an earthquake.

The doors to the building are at once a sign of near-safety and a menace with chunks of masonry and stonework crashing to the ground all along the building's façade, including in front of the entrance. Logan watches Marcus dive through the falling debris and kick the doors in, Dom follows him and Logan pauses to makes sure Cole and Baird are right behind him before risking the manoeuvre himself and coming to his feet at a run, darting up the large, trembling staircases before they succumb to the destructive forces racking the city. Cole and Baird come up behind them and, taking advantage of their absolute focus on their goal, he slows down subtly and falls in behind them, well aware that he is far more likely to survive being in a collapsing building than them.

Marcus slams his foot into the door to the roof and bursts out onto the flat plane of stone, blinking dust from his eyes and staring desperately at the sky in the hopes of seeing the familiar silhouette of a King Raven on the approach. The clouds scud by, oblivious to the events beneath them. With a crack the roof lists to one side sharply and behind him Marcus hears Baird swearing and Cole proclaiming that the floor literally fell out from beneath him.

He goes to use his earpiece when Dom says something.

"Shit. Where…?" He looks back at Cole and Baird and realises why Dom looks so upset. Cole is covered in the white flaky remnants of the landing below the stairs to the roof and Logan, Logan is nowhere to be seen.

_He fell behind, wasn't healthy enough to keep up and in the rush, no-one saw him fall. The floor went out from beneath his fee-_

Marcus snaps his head back around to search the sky again, not wanting to hear his mind detailing Logan's death so soon after he saved their lives. The King Raven appears from behind a cloud at the same time as its pilot comes across on the comms.

"This is KR Six-Zero, we have a visual on you, coming in to pick up."

"Affirmative." Is Marcus' sole reply. The chopper comes down low and hovers just inches above the roof, Marcus stands by as Dom, Cole and Baird climb in and then follows them, looking back all the while in the hope that the little man that killed a Berserker will pull another ace out of his sleeve and come racing across the rooftops in time to make it out.

_Another death on your squad, Sergeant Fenix. Another one lost._

The King Raven pulls up and banks away as Tollen implodes and caves in on itself. Water rushes in from nearby lakes and reservoirs to fill the chasm and the sound mirrors the noise inside Marcus' head. The report he'll have to compile back at base writes itself amidst the mental chaos.

_Mission accomplished, no casualties._


	5. Devoured

Marcus looks down at Carmine's acid-burned corpse and all he can think of is how young the brother was, how someone always dies on his watch, how he can never seem to get everyone home in one piece. Dom lays one hand on his shoulder and he looks back up at Cole, Baird and Dizzy, all waiting for him to lead them deeper into the Riftworm's bowls and hopefully, miraculously, back to the surface world alive and well. He refrains from sighing and keeps his Lancer ready as he takes point and forges onwards into the alien passages.

Dizzy swears every now and then, often at the sight of something particularly strange or at one of Baird's barbed comments. Marcus is grateful for something other than their situation to think about as he listens to the cutting banter, back-and-forth battles of sarcasm that wind Baird up and chill Dizzy out until Cole has to intervene and stop Baird from killing him. Every now and then a comment reaches his ears that makes him laugh inside, either at Baird's relentless ego and temper or Dizzy's remarkable knack for knowing just what buttons to push.

Mid-smile, he stops, scans the environment again. Nothing.

"See something?" Dom asks quietly. Marcus shakes his head.

"I'm not sure, thought I did but…" He sweeps his gaze around the strangely expansive area.

"Well, look what the worm ate." The figure doesn't flinch at the sight of five Lancers being pointed at him. He just crouches down on the ledge above them and picks something up, a second later and he uses it to light a cigar procured out of somewhere. Marcus watches warily, but lowers his Lancer to a less menacing height.

"Who are you?" he asks. The figure laughs and the flash of teeth is familiar, the curl of smoke drifting out from behind them not obscuring them enough to hide the abnormally sharp canines.

"Damn, and here I thought we'd got to know each other better than this, Marcus." The figure straightens up in the shadows.

Marcus goes to ask again but is cut off. "You know anyone else likely to survive earthquakes and being eaten by giant worms?" The figure jumps nimbly down to the ground and in the light Marcus finally places the wicked grin.

"Logan! How the hell?" Logan grins even wider and shrugs. Dom gasps and Baird splutters while Cole's booming laugh is something Marcus hadn't realised he missed.

"Damn little man, you are hard to kill!" Said man flips the bird at Cole and then looks to Dizzy, who tugs on his hat and introduces himself quickly. Marcus waits a moment for the surprise to wear off a moment before asking any serious questions.

"Have you been in here since we last saw you?"

"Yeah, but I've managed, wasn't expecting to see any friendly faces any time soon though, I have to admit." Marcus thinks for a moment.

"What you said was true, wasn't it?" Logan lifts his chin and visibly weighs Marcus up.

"Yup." He turns and begins to walk away.

"Hey" Where the hell you go-" Baird shouts at him, he turns around and glares and Marcus realises he never told the rest of them about what had been said back in Tollen.

"You coming or what?" Logan demands and with his shoulders a little less burdened, Marcus leads Delta after him.

Logan ducks into a few low openings and smirks at the irony of him being at an advantage in this environment as the Gears behind have to almost crawl through. He takes the long route back to his den, aware of the fact that these men don't have the same training he does, superb soldiers they may be but ninja they are not and asking them to scale near vertical surfaces unaided might be asking a bit much.

He reaches the entrance and waits for Delta to catch up with him before strolling through the archway and into the space beyond. Ledges, niches, walkway-like stretches of flesh make it a perfect foxhole for someone as agile as Logan and make it a nightmare for any swallowed Locust to attack, should they even find it in the first place. Scavenged furniture and knick-knacks from the sunken cities, taken before the corrosion had the chance to set in, make the chamber a little more human than the rest of the Riftworm's insides, testament to how long Logan has been in its body.

"Hell, this place looks better than some Stranded hovels I've seen." Baird exclaims as he enters, similar noises of awe coming from Dizzy and Cole. A minute later and the squad have arranged themselves in a loose circle, perched on boxes and chairs, no-one watching the door after Logan reassures them that he'll know if anything hostile comes anywhere near to the den. Marcus is the first to speak.

"You only gave me the basics in Tollen, but not believing you isn't really an option, so…" He trails off, for once unsure of how to word his demand. Logan leans back in his chair.

"You want me to give you the detailed explanation of how I got here and why I'm still alive?" He says it like a question, despite knowing that it was exactly what Marcus was after. He grins. "That's a long story, but I guess you ain't going nowhere soon.

"I heal quick, is the first thing. Not as in gets better sooner than most, as in takes a grenade to the stomach and it's healed up in minutes if I ain't taking too much other damage. Makes getting drunk real hard and makes killing me even harder. I've held me own guts in so many times I can't count any more, can't remember how many times I've basically been dead either. Plenty of people have tried to kill me and some have tried to turn me into some kind of killing machine too." He cracks his neck and the sound rings, like metal more than bone.

"Which is how I got a metal skeleton. Adamantium, don't know if you have it over here but back home it's the hardest material known to man. Poisonous but the healing factor takes care of that, just like it hauled me through the bonding process alive. I was brainwashed after that, lost all my memories and it took me decades to get them back, still haven't quite managed it completely either. The other thing I've got is enhanced senses, senses of hearing, smell and sight better than any eagle or dog, that's how I knew where the Locust were, they stink and they ain't quiet either so they ain't hard to keep track of.

"The one problem with it all is the fact that I'm not classed as a 'feral' for nothing, when some people tell you they've got a beast in the back of their head, they're normally just talking about a truckload of anger, but I literally do go 'animal,' just hack away at whatever I'm up against until it dies or I do. Normally I've got it under some control but that Berserker just sent me mental, something in the roar just drove me over the edge.

The last thing my genetics gave me is claws, bone, but then they were coated with adamantium same as the rest of me." He pops the ones on his right hand and enjoys the way Baird at least jumps slightly. "These can cut through anything, apart from adamantium." He sheathes them again.

"I work in a team of other people like me, mutants with extra genetics that grants us 'gifts' as most of the team calls them, we protect mutants from normal humans and normal humans from the mutants who think that they are the next, superior step in human evolution. I know all sorts of mutants: telepaths, pyrokinetics, people who can fly, control the forces of magnetism or teleport themselves or others around the place. Which is how I ended up crashing the party here. An anti-mutant protest by a load of militants went violent and I took a sniper shot for this little girl hiding with her brother behind a car. Thing is, we knew she was an inter-dimensional teleporter but we didn't think she could do much and seeing as she had only used it twice, accidentally, well, we hadn't been tracking her abilities or where she 'ported stuff. Then she teleported me here."

Baird scoffs, "you expect us to believe you got sent here by a teleporter?" Logan raises an eyebrow. Then instead of arguing, pops the middle claw on his left hand and stabs it right through his right wrist, the scrape of metal on metal bizarrely loud. He waits for the blood to start pouring off the end of the blade and then retracts it and holds his arm up for Baird to see the wound heal.

"You ever seen anyone do that before?" He asks coldly. Baird looks a little queasy and shakes his head. Logan drops his arm back onto the armrest. "Then what's your problem? Think about it, you're inside a giant worm Blondie, life don't get much weirder than that."

Dizzy laughs, "well, apart from you, Mr Alien." Logan raises the other eyebrow and tilts his head.

"Yeah, I guess that one works."

Marcus watches them asleep in their chairs for a moment before levering himself up as quietly as possible and heading over to the doorway and heading out, Lancer left behind but pistol and grenades still in place. He takes the main corridor, noticing and then dismissing the two exits near the den's entrance, one that even Logan would have to duck into and one only big enough for a man to crawl through no matter their height. The thrum of the Riftworm's pulse rings in his ears constantly and a particularly loud beat forces Marcus to stop and lean against the nearest wall to wait for his head to stop spinning so he can keep walking.

"You'll get used to that." Logan's voice comes out of nowhere until with some surprise, despite what he was told earlier, Marcus sees him appear out of the shadowed space above a ledge high up the opposite wall and somersault neatly to the floor. He grins, as seems to be his habit. "It gets worse if you go deeper." Marcus looks at him questioningly and Logan obliges by providing more information. "This thing's got three hearts and the closer you get to 'em the louder the pulse gets. That's why I haven't killed it yet, I've had no reason to give myself the mother of all migraines."

"Would you now?" Marcus asks, curious about the motives behind this man.

"Yeah, provided I get a lift to somewhere with a bath and a bar in return." Comes the sardonic reply, Marcus smirks, truly a soldier's answer.

"Dom find his woman yet?" He jerks around, flummoxed by how Logan could have known about Maria. "I saw the tat and can tell he's looking for something, the photo just cinched it." The mutant explains, unwilling to cause trouble over his feline levels of curiosity. Marcus faces away, stares down the corridor, his friend's lack of success isn't pleasant to watch and he'd hate to have to endure it.

"No." The expected condolence never arrive, Logan just moves to lean against the wall on the other side of the corridor and lights up another cigar.

"Shoot me for being so damned nosy but hell, I've been stuck down here for a helluva time, what were you locked up for?"

"Deserting my post, I went to save my father from the Locust and we lost most of Ephyra because of it, I got a dishonourable discharge and was locked up in the Slab for it."

"The Slab? That the name for your big prison? The mutant one back home was called the Cage, I beat so many faces to a pulp in there that I can barely remember anything else about the place." Logan's revelation of having been in a similar position isn't news to Marcus, he had thought Logan was an ex-convict. "'Course I was in there for something I actually did, under someone else's control or not. Still, I've been in loads of prisons, wasn't anything I couldn't cope with." The wry smile wasn't what Marcus expected to see when Logan mentioned control, not after his earlier comments about brainwashing. His own curiosity wins out for once.

"What did you do?" Logan gives another of his weird, fluid shrugs, like a cat stretching its muscles.

"Killed people, people who knew about the project that put the metal in me. Someone got the old files and rebooted the control system, was a while before I realised I was being used again and by then I'd done the murders, been identified and was a wanted man. If Hank hadn't tagged along they'd never have got me but shit happens, y'know?"

"Your… abilities would've let you evade capture?" Marcus seeks clarification and Logan looks at him blandly.

"It was a mutant prison, they _knew_ how to catch mutants. One of the best espionage operatives around though? Not a chance." He doesn't offer more detail about his skills and Marcus leaves it at that. The silence isn't oppressive, but is still laden somehow and Marcus becomes aware of how humid and warm the tunnels are, how much heat is radiating off the living tissue he is surrounded by. He tugs at his collar and debates whether to lose the armour for a while, seeing as Logan has guaranteed their safety while in the vicinity of his bolthole.

"Fuck…" The muttered expletive distracts him for an instant and he looks across in time to see Logan clamp his cigar between his teeth and open the last few buttons on his worn shirt, an obvious rescue from the Riftworm's swallowed cities. A memory of the prison showers, before they moved him to solitary, tries to surface in Marcus' mind but he shoves it down and dumps memories of Anya, what brief contact they had, on top. An old comment someone once made about the Slab before his confinement slips past the improvised barriers.

_You better not drop the soap in _those_ showers, I'm telling you!_

Marcus goes back to staring resolutely at the end of the corridor.

"Oh just to top it off…" Logan's words are a grumble of irritation and as he stalks past, shirt tucked into the back of his jeans, Marcus forgets himself and spends a second watching the glide of muscle under his comrade's still-tanned skin. Then common sense reasserts itself and he follows, palming his pistol and checking it over as he goes.

"What's wrong, somethi-" Logan doesn't wait for his question to end.

"Locust, probably came down when you did, coming through the obvious route up here, you know the sight of their gutted fellows never puts them off entirely, just makes 'em antsy. Suicidal bastards." He flexes his arms as he talks and Marcus remembers the shining silver of the claws and also the glints seen during Logan's slaughter of the Berserker. He contemplates suggesting going back to fetch the others but Logan doesn't seem bothered and Marcus trusts enough in the man's judgement to follow his lead here, where he is infinitely more knowledgeable of the territory.

"Put that pistol away, Fenix." The words come out as a near snarl and Marcus does a double take. "I'm in need of some stress relief." Logan continues, leading him around a corner and down a smaller tunnel. The Locust become audible at last and Marcus wonders at how good Logan's hearing is if he could sense them under the pulse-thrum from all the way back near the den. They near a low gap at what would otherwise be a dead-end and Logan signals that he remain quiet before crawling through the space. Marcus follows and then stops and crouches on the ledge when Logan gestures for him to stop there. The Locust have their backs to the two men, and are investigating piles of their dead kin. Logan stands and leaps to a beam of flesh across the tunnel, deeply shadowed and Marcus almost loses sight of him in the gloom.

Another leap and then Marcus does lose sight as Logan comes to rest on a beam right above the Locust. They remain oblivious and Marcus has to admire Logan's skill although his own experiences demand he palm his pistol again, just in case. He watches as, like a wraith, Logan drops down into the group of Locust and kills three immediately, taking heads and opening stomachs with equal ease. The ones at the edge of the group go to open fire but the wild man in their midst lashes out and the guns fall apart. Blood sprays the tunnel walls and the fight is over in less than a minute, the Locust too unused to close-quarters combat to last for any length of time. Shaking his now blood-soaked hair out of his eyes and sheathing his claws Logan cracks his neck from side to side and then turns back, leaving the bodies lying where they fell as he pads back towards the ledge Marcus is crouching on, blinking, a bit stunned by the ease with which Logan dispatched the Drones.

In a second, Logan is perched on the edge of the ledge, right in front of Marcus. The blood on his face glistens in the organic light of the Riftworm's luminescent cells and the light in Logan's eye reminds him of some of the real psychos back in the Slab, the ones who chose who they liked and stuck by them and then gutted anyone they decided they disliked at a moment's notice. One of the minor prisoners, a near slave to the bigger, tougher inmates, had once told him that he fit right in with those murderers, had the same look about him. Marcus had wanted to prove him right and beat him until he was a smear on the cold floor for saying it.

"I told you I preferred blades." Logan's teeth this time are still white but the smirk has an edge to it and the words a rumbling arrogance behind them. More delicate lines and fans of blood droplets shine wetly on Logan's chest and Marcus is suddenly intensely conscious of his proximity and how long it's been since he had any time to let off steam. Logan cocks his head to one side and studies him, Marcus feels like a bird being observed by a cat that doesn't need to kill it because it's already eaten.

"We done here?" He asks, shunting things around in his head to barricade doors he'd figured were locked forever. Logan blinks, nods and gestures for him to precede him back through the crawl hole. Once through Logan takes the lead again, Marcus doesn't protest because he still can't figure out how to navigate these living tunnels and he would rather not get lost. The shirt hanging from Logan's jeans moves in time with the man's fluid gait and distracts Marcus further. He spends most of the walk back to the den hating himself for not being in complete control of himself, and the remainder of the time goes towards not being in complete control of himself.

_Cabin fever_, Logan tells himself, _you've gone too long without anything around but Locust, mindless cannon fodder that they are, and it's got to you. Otherwise you wouldn't be considering Marcus when you know he's got a thing for the comms girl. Or considering him full stop._ But a tiny voice pipes up and reminds him of what was said earlier, with Baird and Dom joining forces to spill the beans of the aloof Marcus Fenix a little. How he's spent over 14 years pining for the girl and never made a move. How he hasn't made any moves on any women, despite offers, since Dom busted him out of prison. The joke being tossed around by Baird was that Marcus turned asexual somewhere along the line and is acting like he still cares for Anya as a cover-up.

Logan's good at reading people, blame it on his enhanced senses or espionage experience, but he is and although poker-faced this sergeant might be, Logan knows that's not the case. Or at least, not quite. It never happened in the Cage, not when there were so many feuds going on, but in other maximum security prisons, you get men like Marcus thrown in who've towed the line for their entire lives except for that one, crucial moment, and sometimes being locked up with psychos and killers changes their outlook. Maybe Marcus isn't the straight-laced sergeant his squad think he is, Logan's willing to be that in the Slab he may not have turned himself into a fief lord but he didn't skulk around in the shadows and do nothing, not if he came out of there alive and sane. Or, Logan can't help but smirk, was that do no-one?

He always thought America was the worst for that, the guys who'd never considered doing anything other than what was right and decent sometimes stayed that way or realised that hell, they were officially _bad people_, who cared if they liked their own gender? Either that or the separation from the women just drove them so mad that they stopped caring either way. Logan's smirk widens, he took advantage of more than a few of those ones.

The issue still remains though: would Marcus still be open to a proposition? Logan considers the problem carefully as the entrance to the foxhole appears from around a corner and in the end gives up on it. _If he goes for it, all the better, if he don' then it's no harm, no foul. 'Sides, I can't be bothered with dancing around this, not when I suspect he might be up for grabs after all._

The other four members of Delta are still asleep in their chairs when he strolls in, Baird snoring softly and Dizzy with a bottle of moonshine kept close even during sleep. And kept close whilst empty, judging by the smell of alcohol that permeates the air, anyway. Logan throws his shirt into a crate and then rummages around to find a scrap of cloth. That found, he wipes the worst of the blood off himself and then throws that somewhere too, Marcus loiters, not sitting down and risking waking everybody up with the creak of wood or plastic, just hovering between the doorway and Logan's jumble of crates and boxes, irritatingly. Logan resists the urge to turn around and tell the man to just find something to do and carries on digging through his assorted odds and ends. By the time he's found the old armour and Stetson he knew were around somewhere, he's still itching to snap at Marcus, because he's just drifted closer to the crates and is still loitering. Logan's fingers touch cold metal and he grins. Payload.

He moves aside the books obscuring the item and with a boyish smile lifts the Lancer clean of the box's confines. The weapon's previous owner evidently cared for it well because as he slips a finger under the chain the movement is still quite easy and smooth and the bolt draws back without any resistance, the magazine is in good condition and underneath the gun's resting place lies a tool kit and boxes of ammunition.

"Good find." Marcus speaks from just behind him, bare inches separating him from Logan, who immediately curses himself, not for letting Marcus sneak up on him, but for letting anything happen without him noticing. He glances over his shoulder and sees nothing but breastplate.

"Yeah, knew one was in here somewhere, could smell the gun oil but never bothered to dig it out and have a look." Marcus leans forward a little and reaches a hand forward.

"May I?" He asks, unusually polite. Logan passes the Lancer to him and notes how Marcus has to use both hands to hold it steady, then it's back to facing the crates and pretending to be absorbed by the toolkit and books while drinking in the scents and sounds of the man behind him, feeling his movements as they dislodge air, creating tiny breezes that Logan knows normal people can't feel. He knows exactly what Marcus is doing though, and closing his eyes, lets his mind construct the image of the sergeant taking the weapon through its paces quickly and efficiently, a soldier through and through. Without a word Marcus passes the gun back and Logan leaves it resting on top of the crates. He turns around, wanting to ask why Marcus is just hovering around the place when he could be getting some sleep.

The contact is a half-surprise but not unwanted and Logan quickly deepens the kiss, scraping his canines against Marcus' rough lips and snaking his tongue into his mouth, tasting the man fully, enhanced senses opened completely, sensation flooding in as he revels in the growing scent of arousal, the quickening beat of the sergeant's heart, the taste of his mouth, the feel of the man pressed up against him. He grins into the kiss and fits two fingers under a plate on Marcus' breastplate, pulls him in that bit closer and settles in for the long haul, too deprived to care about waking anyone up anymore but not yet desperate enough to go too far in such circumstances.

_Might forget about that soon._ He muses wryly, briefly, as the warmth of Marcus' mouth, the slide of another tongue on his own and the odd bitten-back hissing exhalation of pure want all head straight down south. Logan lets his other hand move to Marcus' belt, fingers wrapping around the cold metal of the buckle. Marcus, both hands holding onto Logan's hips like vices, frees one to clamp onto Logan's, the disapproval clear. Logan flexes his fingers inside the tight grip just to prove his strength and loosens the buckle enough that the strap of heavy-duty fabric slips out too fast for Marcus to try and stop him.

"We'll get-" Logan catches his bottom lip and sucks on it to stop Marcus protesting, he prefers the muffled groans, thanks. And then he lets Marcus go and drops to his knees.

"Best keep it quiet then, _sarg_." Marcus clutches at his trousers as Logan deftly undoes the flies and tugs on them. "Don't stop it now, you don't want to." He then adds, amused by the Gear's last-ditch attempt to keep things to the bare minimum in spite of what he would so obviously prefer.

Marcus groans aloud at that, would swear but can't summon up the mental faculties needed and so leaves it at the incoherent sound. He's gone too damn long without to put up more than a token fight and what's more: Logan knows. Knows, and takes full advantage, pulling Marcus' pants down and skipping all niceties as he takes the tip of his cock inside his mouth and sucks. For a split second Marcus wonders what business a man with teeth as dangerous as Logan's has near as sensitive an organ, until the mutant takes him all in with a fluid little bob of his head. Marcus wraps the man's hair around his fingers as he steals back a modicum of control by dictating Logan's rhythm. Or at least, attempting to. It's not long before even that is too intellectual a task for the deprived and lust-addled sergeant's mind and then he's throwing his head back, pulse roaring in his ears as Logan deep throats him and rubs his rough tongue –catlike, he ponders in his single non-distracted brain cell – along the underside of Marcus' cock.

"Fuck… oh shit…" Words return to him in a rush but it's a little too late. Logan doesn't hesitate in swallowing, keeping his motion up until Marcus is spent and then releasing him and looking up with reddened lips and a mischievous grin that Marcus _would_ suspect he'll be seeing a lot of, only to suspect anything is too hard even for the intelligent man he is, after that little episode. Dully, he notices Logan zipping up his own pants and the mess over his hand as he rises back to his feet. Marcus wastes no time in grabbing another kiss, tasting himself in Logan's mouth and feeling smugger at the concept than he should with someone he's known for less than two days.

_Yeah, but you don't need time to get to know a man like Logan, or you. Not really, you just need to be a man like you or Logan. Thieves know thieves and so on and so forth…_ The snide, witty murmur sneaks in and out of his head, taking advantage of Marcus' distraction to evade capture and analysis. Far too soon for his own liking, and Logan's as well by the raging lust in his eyes, Marcus breaks away from the kiss, panting quietly. Understanding instantly dawns and Logan hands him another scrap of cloth, one of many lying around, Marcus observes through the dwindling fog in his head, and points him in the direction of some source of water and privacy. Licking his lips to scrounge up the last tastes of sex and Logan, he goes.

If anyone notices anything the next 'period-of-time-when-everyone's-awake,' Marcus doesn't see it. He sees Logan wander around shirtless and follows that out of the corner of his eyes but then again, the man has muscles like nobody's business. Marcus figures that he's obligated to make sure such a work of art doesn't go unappreciated. As Dizzy and Baird finish their 'morning' bicker and Dom decides he's rifled enough stuff from Logan's accumulated piles of stuff, Marcus runs through the basic plan he cooked up with Logan while everyone was still asleep, splitting a bottle of moonshine (not Dizzy's toxic brew) and a pack of field rations.

Trust men like him and Logan to decide that if they are in something alive than the easiest way out is to kill it. The logic behind the idea doesn't escape him though, the Riftworm has three hearts, confirmed by the occasional head-spinning pulse and the constant thrum of the blood flowing around them. Dizzy hooted in amusement, yeeha'd at the concept of a three-way cardiac bypass, Cole laughed and Baird made some witty quip, Dom smiled his relief at a plan of action suddenly appearing and Logan shrugged on the old, light-weight scale-design breastplate like it was something he'd been born to do.

Cole had made a comment along those lines actually and Marcus frowns in remembrance of the surge of anger that crackled trough him at the notion someone else was considering the mutant in any depth. Now, he finds it more amusing, snarking to himself that he's quite sure Logan was born for something other than war. The possessiveness lingers however, and he struggles to pin down what gave rise to it in such a short amount of time.

But his introspection is cut short as Logan reappears, black Stetson on, Lancer slung over his shoulder and salvaged Pendulum War concussion and incendiary grenades crossing his chest, hanging from specially made bandoliers. _Grenadier._ The name comes to him, the older, pre-Locust association being a soldier who specialised in, to some extent, grenades and mortars. The charges of unidentified explosives strapped into another custom belt add another qualification onto Logan's slowly evolving list of wartime skills: Sapper. The casual wink thrown his way kicks his mind back into the gutter and Marcus gives up thinking about Logan's combat skills in favour of trying not to think about him entirely. Far too distracting. Especially in public.

It's good, Logan decides, to not be that bit on edge after years of maintaining an iron-restraint. He cracks his neck just for the hell of it and swipes what he needs from the crates as the squad get ready to leave, having discussed the plan and realised that they don't really have any other options. Ammo is slung into pockets, Baird and Dizzy squabble, Dom raids his gathered supplies and Marcus keeps watching him. He winks at the sergeant and smiles when he turns away before he can get… uncomfortable. He smirks and carries on walking around just on the edges of Marcus' field of vision, breastplate carrying fresh red Omen icons, although the one on the chest is bisected by the middle of three lines also in red, slanting down the armour to make a subtle comment: I'm the Wolverine. Fuck with me and die. _Painfully._

Finally the impression is that they can set off, Baird sulking after Dizzy came up with a one-liner about engineers that he couldn't respond to quickly enough. Marcus once again takes point and Logan takes what is fast becoming 'his place' at the man's shoulder, across from Dom in the formation. Logan directs them back to the main tunnel, the Riftworm's throat and from then on leaves it up to Marcus which way they go, although there is only one real choice: down. Past the teeth and then a series of tunnels filled with a toxic gas that Logan gets the delightful task of scouting out for a way through before leading the susceptible Gears through at a run. After that, the temperature increases with the volume of the pulse until Logan wants to punch something just to make something else feel the pain he is, ears almost bleeding from the abuse.

He keeps going though and when the nemacysts appear out of the walls, lays into them with his claws before the squad can raise their guns to fire. They cut through another thin membrane at the end of a tunnel however and he drops to his knees, hands clamped over his ears as the heartbeat comes through suddenly louder, clearer and driving him insane. The stench of blood rolls over him like a wave of lead and the only thing he can think of is stopping it all somehow. He glares up at Marcus and Dom, lets them know quite clearly that he'll carry on but only when they've stopped the heart from beating. Then he watches the Gears walk past him and rev up their chainsaw bayonets, Dom taking one artery with Dizzy covering him, Cole covering Baird and Marcus taking the middle blood vessel alone.

The nemacysts scuttle out of their hiding places as soon as blade touches artery and Cole and Dizzy do an admirable job of gunning them down at first until the numbers increase as two out of three arteries are hacked through. Then five slip through the covering fire and Logan doesn't think, just hands control over to the enraged, tortured beast and lunges. One, gutted, two, bisected, three, decapitated, four, stab wounds to spine, five, claws embedded in brain matter. The heartbeat stops. He breathes a long sigh of relief as the noise level drops back to something his enhanced hearing can cope with and retracts his claws, the beast knowing it can't stay in control this time. Dizzy and Cole stare at him, unnerved by the speed at which he moved into the fight and the near instant deaths of the nemacysts. He doesn't bother to say anything, simply comes out of his crouch and swipes away a drop of blood from under his eye, replacing it with a deep red smear.

Marcus takes one assessing look at him and then leads them on towards the next, pressured heart. Logan grits his teeth and shakes his head, fixatedly ignoring the blood dripping out of his ears and the minor agony of his blown eardrums repairing themselves. The second heart is much the same, only this time Dizzy and Cole lose the advantage earlier as the Riftworm's systems panic, the loss of one heart sending panic waves shivering through the tunnel walls and increasing the floods of nemacysts to the heart caverns. Logan dives in again, feeling the faltering heartbeat in his own body as he slices nemacysts to pieces with his mind overcome by the weakening pulse. He winces as his eardrums have to heal for a second time, experience not making it any more of a bearable feeling. At the third heart he can tell the nemacysts are there already before the membrane is cut through, feeling their little hearts echoing the Riftworm's last, overworked one. Silently he hands Marcus six charges and settles down on his haunches to wait out the coming pain, knees deep in the growing swells of blood filling the passage ways.

The irony of him, the mighty Wolverine having to endure torture solely because of the attributes that normally make him so dangerous isn't lost on him. Neither is the fact that if they don't cut their way out of the Riftworm fast enough they may well drown in its blood. _Karma._ As the muffled sounds of the charges detonating register in his minds and the last heart beat stops, Logan pushes forwards, fighting the swelter of blood pouring out of the heart chamber and dodging flood-borne nemacysts as they rush past. He reaches the squad soon enough, blood drenched and on the highest ground available, hacking their way through the very walls of the cavity with their chainsaw bayonets.

Grinning as his eardrums knit back together for a third time, he pops his claws and shoulders past Dom and Baird to get to the wall where the most damage has already been done. After all, he knows first-hand how good pure adamantium is at cutting flesh. Marcus ends up giving up on trying to keep up with him and joins Dizzy and Cole in widening the passage so they can all fit, Logan just keeps hacking away, driving a hole through the Riftworm's body with a tunnel-vision focus. The roar of the Riftworm staggers him, his ears still fragilely raw, the rapid flexing of the muscles as he reaches the outside layers of tissue flays skin off his hands as it catches at him but Logan knows how to stop caring about these things and does so readily, envisaging the cuts then making them over and over again until, blood pooling around his waist, he breaks the surface.


	6. Civilisation

Marcus lies there for a second, then rolls over and gets to his feel slowly, the stillness of the earth a strange contrast to the constant motion of the Riftworm. Cole and Dizzy dance around, arms linked, saluting the earth, God, the sky and their survival with equal fervour. The sound of vomiting draws his attention though and, having seen the ragged state of Logan's hands and the blood trickling out of his ears, Marcus whips his head around to look at Dom, Baird and Logan behind him. Baird is the one throwing up, spluttering expletives in between bouts of retching up worm blood.

"I'm throwing up blood that isn't even mine!" He chokes out, grimacing while even Dom has to hold back a smile. "Do you know how wrong that is?" Logan wanders over and claps him on the back, cue cough and splutter.

"It's worse when it's your own, Blondie, trust me." He saunters over towards Marcus, seemingly much improved from the near-crippled man he was in the presence of the heartbeats. "Damn but I didn't think I'd be able to see the sun again." He says, quietly, half to Marcus and half to himself. Marcus doesn't say anything just spends a moment enjoying the pale light and the feel of solid earth beneath him again.

Then, after the euphoria of being out of the Riftworm fades slightly, Marcus gets on the comms, praying his earpiece still works, and attempts to report back to Control. The static he normally gets for the first second of the connection never fizzes in his ear, instead the voice of Anya reaches him almost immediately.

"Marcus!" And he's surprised to hear the shock in her voice, normally so very neutral, "How did you? We'd heard your transport was over Ilima when it was swallowed, it was assumed you'd been caught too." Logan snorts, Marcus shots a look at him, curious as to whether he is listening in. He is.

"We were swallowed by the Riftworm, yes," he clarifies, "but we managed to survive and make our way to its hearts, then we cut our way out of it." Anya's stifled gasp is still gratifying, a testament to the fact that however rarely people actually say it, Marcus has a knack for hauling himself and his squad out of the really deep shit. _Well, most of the squad, most of the time._ He reminds himself.

"Right, well, Commander Hoffman wants you to come back here for debriefing. I'm sending a King Raven to pick you up now, I'll get supplies loaded on as well, I doubt you've eaten in a while…" She trails off, muttering logistics and Marcus realises that his survival really has shocked her if her professional manner is dropping this much. He interrupts her musings.

"If you send supplies, send enough for six," he tells her, "we found a survivor." And unwilling to endure a brutal session of earpiece interrogation at the hands of Hoffman who is undoubtedly on his way to commandeer Anya's connection, he cuts the link. Logan looks at him.

"That the Anya I keep hearing about?" The mutant asks. Marcus sees where he's coming from and moves to intercept that train of thought, another wave of possessiveness flooding his mind.

"There may've been something there, but if there was, it died when I got locked up." He informs Logan, who nods and looks away, strolling over to the patch of rock rising out of the ground in search of somewhere to sit. Marcus decides he'll follow on in a minute.

The whir of the Raven choppers brings everyone to their feet and sends Marcus' hand to his earpiece, while Logan, presumably having heard it earlier on, remains on the boulders with his head resting on his hands and his feet propped up, Stetson pulled down over his face. Marcus fights the urge to smack his boots off the stone as he opens up a comms channel with the Raven.

"This is KR One-Eight, we have you on visual, coming in to pick you up."

"Affirmative, One-Eight." Marcus responds.

"Affirmative yourself, Fenix 'cause boy, are we glad to see you! Thought we'd be stuck flying boring transport missions without you boys getting into trouble all the time." Comes the pilot's voice as the Raven drops down to land in front of them. Delta pile on board, Dizzy giving thanks for the bottle of moonshine stashed amongst the supplies Anya ordered loaded on. Logan takes the space opposite Marcus and the two share a tired look of relief. The Raven lifts off and the scream of the wind and thrum of the rotors makes easy conversation impossible without use of earpieces. Marcus settles for observing Logan as he resumes his nap, spurring Baird into new heights of rage as the blond man launches into a tirade on the difficulties of sleeping in an APC, let alone an airborne helicopter. Dizzy sneaks in a jibe about jealousy and their spat resumes mid-insult from the last round.

Marcus wants to smirk: he can see Logan trying not to laugh and knows that the man isn't asleep, not yet anyway.

While Logan follows Delta through the buildings, he clocks every curious look and every second glance as Gears notice him in the midst of what seems to one of the most infamous squads around. He's the shortest person around too, excluding those who are obviously admin or medical staff and he knows his salvaged armour is dated, he knew the moment he found it, still, he keeps his eyes from wandering to meet the gaze of any intrigued onlookers and keeps walking. The double doors are a welcome sign, wide open as staff stride in and out on various tasks. The squad walk in without pausing and the centre of the room is what grabs Logan's attention immediately after the precursory scan that he no longer performs consciously.

Topographical, projected maps depict vast swathes of land and screens flicker all around, staff seated at computers, manning communication channels day in, day out. The three figures by the map tables are the ones he measure up though, the tall one with the darker hair and politician's eyes he tags as Chairman Prescott, the leader of the COG, the other man in military dress is then therefore Hoffman and the petite blonde woman he labels through the way she glances once at the rest of the squad and then keeps her eyes fastened on Marcus. Anya Stroud. Marcus salutes briskly and then goes to report.

"What's the civilian doing in here, Sergeant Fenix?" Hoffman barks.

"He was at Tollen, sir." Marcus replies emotionlessly. Hoffman raises an eyebrow sceptically.

"Tollen was sunk by the Riftworm, Sergeant."

"He survived the event, sir, and then helped us kill the Riftworm… Sir." Marcus supplies in argument.

"And does that make him Gear material, Sergeant? Has he been sworn in?"

"Yes sir, and no sir." Hoffman's eyes show a respect for Marcus, Logan can see that from a mile off, but he can also tell that Hoffman is something of a stickler for rules when it suits him.

"Then he shouldn't be here, Sergeant." Marcus tenses up and Logan decides to involve himself directly before the man can get himself in trouble.

"I'll swear in now, Colonel." Hoffman switches from glaring at Marcus to eyeballing Logan in a second.

"We can't let anyone be a Gear, man. How do I know you're able to fight well enough? Because you don't exactly meet the height limit." Logan sighs internally, he gets that Hoffman can't let anybody join up, not in a war like this, but the Colonel's obstinacy will get really annoying, really fast.

"What would you like me to tell you? That I can kill a man with my bare hands? Because I can, easily. Do you want me to tell you how many Drones I can kill in a minute because I was bored enough to count in the Riftworm. Or do you already know about Tollen?" Logan eyeballs the commander right back, unwilling to give an inch. Hoffman caves first and switches back to Marcus.

"What happened in Tollen, Sergeant Fenix? Because I don't recall mention of civilian involvement in your report." Marcus smells of anger, not much but enough that Logan can tell the Colonel is pushing the sergeant's limits now.

"He helped us out of the ambush, sir, and covered our rear when Cole was hurt. He then offered to help us in return for transport to or pointing in the direction of 'civilisation,' sir."

"Some could say that the Stranded that help you out from time to time are then fine to let enlist." Hoffman retorts.

"Stranded don't kill Berserkers by themselves, Colonel Hoffman, sir." Marcus doesn't even twitch as he says it. Hoffman does.

"Sergeant are you trying to tell me that this civilian killed a Berserker by himself?"

"Yes sir."

"And do you expect me to believe you?"

"Sir, why don't you ask him how he did it?" Marcus throws back. Hoffman scowls.

"How did you manage to do, by yourself, what has only been achieved through use of the Hammer of Dawn, civilian?" He demands, temper fraying. Logan shrugs.

"Gutted it, sir. Took it apart." He looks Hoffman straight in the eye. "You'd be surprised what a good knife can do." He smiles grimly. "That and a few grenades rammed down its face, a chainsaw and a pillar or two. Structural damage was heavy but a couple of tonnes of high velocity stone going at hundreds of miles per hour can shred pretty much anything." The Colonel says nothing for a minute.

"Are you a sapper?"

"Sapper, grenadier, tracker and a half-decent mechanic too." Logan nods slightly, "sir." Hoffman gives him a once over.

"You're in. Talk to Stroud here about tags and equipment." Logan salutes crisply.

"Dismissed, Delta. Head back to your quarters and rest up, you're deploying again the days after tomorrow at 0400h." Hoffman turns back to Prescott and the maps. Anya steps up.

"What's your name?" She asks Logan, all business first.

"James Logan Howlett." He states.

"Any aliases, nicknames?"

"Wolverine." She blinks. He grins dangerously.

"Age?"

"32. I'm 5ft 4, weigh about 300lbs, can bench press the sergeant here and I've previous combat experiences on all terrains as infantry, shock infantry, sapper, grenadier, tracker, scout and paratrooper. Black ops too. Need anything else?" He raises an eyebrow and waits for the faint scent of fear to fade a bit. She shakes her head.

"I'll create your file, the quartermaster is, well, Sergeant Fenix will show you, and he'll issue you with equipment and give you your COG tags. I'm going to assume you're assigned to Delta-One so you can bunk in with Sergeant Fenix on the spare bed in his room." With that done and one last, lingering look at Marcus she heads back to the computers and takes a seat. Dom whistles softly as they turn to leave.

"You were black ops?" He asks in a near whisper.

"That and deeper-than. As deep as you can go stuff in some cases."

"Yeah, well, don't get cocky, runt. And bench press Fenix, are you kidding me?" Blondie chips in. Logan flashes him a glare back.

"The last guy to call me runt got his head chopped off, Blondie. And no, I wasn't kidding. Want me to punch you so you can check?" He winks as Blondie straightens up and tries to think of a suitable comeback. They get outside the doors to the room and Marcus tells Dizzy, Cole and Baird to head to their rooms, he and Dom will go with Logan to the Quartermaster's. Dizzy shrugs and Cole just claps Baird on the back and starts nearly dragging him along. Dom smiles.

The Quartermaster's turns out to be an ex-Gear, sans an arm and an eye, who looks Logan over, obviously wanting to make a height comment, until he looks at the computer screen in front of him and his remaining eye bulges in disbelief.

"You ain't a real sapper, are you?" He says, leaning over the workbench that serves as his desk.

"Try me." Logan challenges him.

"How do you make gun cotton?" The Quartermaster demands, grinning toothily.

"Wash cotton in nitric acid, let it dry, wash it in sulphuric acid, let in dry. Repeat until finished. High explosive, great for train tracks." The Quartermaster leans forward more, a conspiratorial expression on his face.

"Is it true?" He murmurs, "did you really kill a Berserker by yourself? Without the Hammer of Dawn?" Logan looks at him for a moment and then shrugs.

"Yeah." The Quartermaster straightens up again, awed.

"I knew two sappers once, marines. They was forever ordering stuff in but they never had time to collect it. Hedge and Fiddler, they was called. I've got a newer version of that light breastplate, a grenade bandolier and spare units of what they called their charge belts. You'll be wanting Lancer ammo, grenades, combat-use C4 and plastique and I'll fish you out some boots too and anything else useful I find." The man shuffles off and Logan turns back to Marcus and Dom who look at him curiously.

"What?"

"Normally you have to fight tooth and nail to get anything out of him and he's giving you extras." Dom complains, mock-accusingly. Logan smirks.

"Yeah, but I killed a Berserker, bare-handed. Have either of you two?" He smirks and leans against the worktop, lazily picking at dirt under his fingernails until the Quartermaster returns with a flatbed trolley made of scrap metal and salvaged parts from decommissioned vehicles. He waves at Logan's current breastplate as he begins to unload the equipment onto the workbench and Logan loosens the straps and lifts it off over his head with ease. The Quartermaster stares for a minute before passing Logan its replacement, all sleek black, light-weight, carbon fibre-metal compounds with a scaled design to allow fluid and smooth movement with as little encumbrance as possible. Logan smirks that bit wider when he hears Dom exhale in a near-whistle. This must be the latest model of COG armour, because Logan has enough tech-savvy to realise this composite is harder than the current standard issue and without the wear and tear of used goods as well.

The bracers are obviously not given to most gears, because alongside being made from the same black compound, they don't feature the same glaring red icons as the all the other armour Logan has seen. But then again, he realises, neither does his new breastplate. He dons both either way though and then examines the belts the Quartermaster hands him, more black but made of tightly woven fibres to form bandoliers that flex enough to be worn easily but deflect damage still. Buckling them on crossing his chest, Logan slots various grenades into the loops: incendiary, concussion, fragmentation, stun and smoke as well as a couple of flash grenades. A form of compressed explosive charges fill the space on the second bandolier, along with fuses, blasting caps and such.

A third such belt, slug around his hips then gives Logan holsters for two heavy-duty .454 revolvers, two combat knives made of the compound material, a long bladed hunting knife. The ammo, Logan assigns to what are evidently still 'the right places' even in this army and the boots he switches to wearing immediately, opting for passing the old ones back for reuse by the next unlucky soul his size in need of footwear. After passing over a pile of black clothing, the Quartermaster gives him an appraising look and turns to the computer for a brief while. Logan can hear Marcus trying not to fidget at the delay. The Quartermaster looks up.

"I've changed your tags a little, nothing serious. And while they're being engraved, d'you always wear a Stetson?"

"Pretty much always, yeah." Logan confirms, "you don't have any throwing knives do you?" He tags on as an afterthought. The Quartermaster thinks for a second.

"Yeah, shuriken too, if you want them." Logan nods. "I'll go get 'em for you, but pass me the hat, would you? Give the tech boys something to do other than whinging about the coffee." Passing up on the chance to ask for clarification, Logan passes his hat over the worktop and the Quartermaster fills his emptied hand with a pair of tags, matt black painted metal this time, except for the words engraved into them in shining silver:

**J. Logan Howlett – Black Ops/Delta-One**

**Wolverine**

_**He Who Kills Berserkers.**_

Logan looks at them and snorts in amusement, without saying anything he passes them back to Marcus to inspect. The Gear seems on the brink of possibly smiling when he passes the tags along to Dom who laughs.

"Not been with us for more than a few days and you're already famous! Cole might get jealous!" Logan laughs with him as he accepts the tags back and slips them on, tucking them under his breastplate and shirt. The Quartermaster shuffles back a few minutes later, when Dom is reduced to just smiling broadly and Marcus' poker face has shifted those few micrometres back into position. Logan gratefully takes the throwing knives and the shuriken, four strap-on leg holsters for the blades as well as two small vials of a clear liquid he can tell is poison just by the way the Quartermaster places them on the workbench for him to pick up rather than risk dropping them.

"I gave the hat to the techies, drop by tomorrow morning and you can pick up the replacement." Logan thanks him and goes to leave. "Oh, and the techies want you to come visit when you get back - to report on the armour." The Quartermaster informs him, Logan tilts his head in acceptance of the request and then heads out of the depot behind Marcus and Dom, arms full of clothes and the throwing blades.

"He must really like you." Dom observes casually as they cross the open space in between the supply depot and barracks.

"Now why would you say that, Dom?" Logan asks, sarcasm flavouring his tone.

"Because he just gave you the tech boys' special stuff. Apparently Prescott has them constantly working on it as much as they can, no-one knows what for. And he gave you custom tags, extra equipment and didn't grumble once."

"Black ops stealth missions." Logan says, suddenly serious. Marcus looks askance at him.

"What?" Dom asks, confused by the seemingly random statement.

"The armour, it's light-weight, matt black with no identifying marks. And all the extra stuff is made of the same material. Whoever these sappers were they were black ops, the only reason you'd carry this lot would be because you were inserting straight into hostile turf with small numbers and around here I guess there were up to three of them at the most and they would live behind the lines until the job was done or they died. Otherwise they'd carry fewer grenades and charges, leave the knives and such for when they were going hunting and rely more on supply drops and resupplying at outposts." Dom looks at him, his normally placid state becoming agitated.

"That would be suicide, you can't live in Locust-occupied space, there's too many of them." Logan shrugs.

"Obviously not."

"You're telling me you worked as black ops and did that kind of thing before?"

"Ha! I was worse, I tended to go solo or with one other operative into places full to the brim of heavily armed, highly trained black ops soldiers who were expecting us with nothing but a pistol, two clips of ammo and anything I could loot once I got there. Trust me Dom, these guys had a fairly decent run of it if they got custom-made gear and so much of it, they were lucky." Logan shakes his head.

Dom frowns, but doesn't comment further, instead, as they approach the door of the barracks he turns to Marcus.

"I know Baird, Cole and Dizzy are planning on getting an hour or two in at the bar before hitting the sack, I think they want to relax a little before redeploying into another hellhole. I was going, are you?" Marcus keeps silent for a minute and Logan can tell without looking at him that he's considering saying no.

"Bar? Damn, I haven't had a decent drink in ages, mind if I join you?" He asks Dom, who shakes his head and says he's welcome to, all the while looking at Marcus, who by the itch between Logan's shoulder blades is glaring daggers at him subtly.

"I'll come." Logan refrains from grinning, knowing that Marcus is only doing so because he is, and confirms the time with Dom as the man heads off to find the room he shares with Dizzy. Marcus stops walking almost directly behind Logan for the rest of the walk to the room they will now be sharing but still remains silent. Logan ignores it and watches the rooms they pass, clocking smells and sounds as they go. The door, when they reach it has the legend H5-03 emblazoned on it in black and Logan notes the designation down as he follows Marcus into the space beyond.

No personal effects. That's the first thing he notices, really. His own room at the mansion used to be much the same until he really settled in but the emptiness of personality is still marginally unsettling. The beds are on opposite sides of the room, each against the wall with a footlocker at the end, a side table by the top and a chest of drawers against the wall the door is set in, facing the footlocker. The window set opposite the door is small and allows in little light. Marcus flicks the light switch and the tubular lighting in the ceiling stutters on. Needing no indication of which the free bed is, Logan dumps his stuff on it and sits down with a sigh.

"You stay in armour around here?" He asks, checking each grenade over and throwing them lightly up and down to get a feel for the various weights and shapes.

"Yeah," Marcus grunts in confirmation. Logan raises an eyebrow at how extremely taciturn the Sergeant is being.

"Problem?"

"No." Logan scoffs at that and Marcus turns around from fishing things out of a drawer.

"Really? Because you're as quiet as the grave. Does my new, unofficial black ops designation irritate you that much?" Marcus shows some minor change in facial expression but it's the change in the man's scent that gives him well and truly away. "I've been sent on suicide missions, Marcus. Was once given a mission that mutants who could move the ground itself, control energy in all its forms and other power-house stuff had died trying to complete, most of them never came near to getting the job done. The op was to get into this base in the middle of a mountain range, constant negative temperatures and a killzone around the walls that went miles out in all directions. They saw everyone coming a mile off and gunned 'em down. Call it over 500 of the best soldiers around and 50 staff." Logan stops for a moment, resting his elbows on his knees and gazing intently at the floor.

"Little old me. I was something of a name already, a legend in the field actually, but they wanted rid of me and this was the one way they could do it for certain. I was to be picked up once I'd eliminated all personnel and got the data needed off the base systems. I wasn't anything approaching sane, that was because of how they were controlling me but even I knew it was suicide. I crawled the miles to the walls from the insertion point, at times almost completely submerged under the snow and I let myself reach a temperature nearing the ambient. Anyone else would've died of frostbite and hypothermia but I reached the walls undetected. Whoop-de-fucking-do, yeah?" He snarls. "I cleaned the place out, every last soul, got the data and was in the central office in the middle of the enclosure, drinking coffee when the extraction team came in. I complained about having gone weeks without beer, Marcus. I didn't give a fuck about the people I'd killed and yeah, they'd cut my conscience out ages back, but I survived and slaughtered everybody and didn't have a mark to show for it."

Marcus looks away when Logan goes to meet his eyes. "Don't worry about my safety, Marcus, no matter what, because I bleed and I feel pain but I was once stripped of all humanity and turned into a killing machine. I can survive nearly anything and I can kill nearly everything apart from myself. Black ops is nothing to me, so save your concern for the rest of the squad, they need it more than I do." Logan raises his chin and dares Marcus to argue.

"Are you still that killing machine, Logan?" The Gear asks softly.

"No, haven't been since I joined the X-Men and learned how to control the animal again, but I can be, just lose it and let the programming take over sometimes. When that happens, leave me behind if you have to, I've gutted comrades in that state, can't tell friend from foe."

"I can't not care for a member of my squad, Logan. Origins aside, abilities and past aside, I can't and won't." Logan sighs, raises his gaze skyward.

"Then go ahead and care but if you try and catch a bullet for me it won't be the Locust you have to worry about, boy." Marcus looks at him flatly.

"Did you just call me boy?" He demands.

"Yeah."

"How old are you Logan?"

"How old are you?" The mutant shoots back.

"35."

"Then I can call you boy 'till the sun goes down because I'm more than a century old." Logan informs him.

"Over a century?" Marcus repeats, questioningly.

"Healing factor, retards aging. Haven't aged a day that I can remember."

"Oh." The discussion ends of its own accord, Logan goes back to checking his new weaponry and laying it out beside him for later. After a laden silence, Marcus speaks up again.

"Maybe I won't take a bullet for you, Logan, but don't think I'm not watching your back. Despite your previous experience." A carefully worded apology along with a refusal to stop caring and a statement of fact: the past is the past, it is not now. _I don't care what you did back then because you aren't that person anymore, I've seen it._

Logan stops what he's doing. Considers the handful of words just said.

"Well, I'm just about done here, we heading down to that bar or what?" He suggests. _You know what was done, think what you will. But thank you._ He places the two combat knives on the bed and stands up. Marcus shuts the drawer and they head back out into the corridors, then over to the mess hall and the building attached to it. Logan considers asking for an official sanction to try and start a bar fight but decides against it, not because Marcus would say no but because it's more fun if it's a bit more spontaneous.


	7. Catharsis

Marcus tells Logan to go ahead and buy two bottles of whiskey or moonshine and four pints of beer while he waits for Dom and the others to arrive. The glint in the mutant's eye unnerves him minutely but still dwelling on the discussion they just had, Marcus puts it down to paranoia or distraction and just hands him the needed money before leaning against the wall besides the doors in a vomit-free spot, taking care not to appear too introspective lest a departing Gear takes it upon their drunken self to try and cheer him up or, God forbid, Dom spots him first and interrogates him as to the cause of his preoccupation.

_Speak of the devil_, the missing squad members appear under the light of the floodlights illuminating the complex' open areas. Marcus pushes himself off the wall and gestures for the arrivals to precede him into the aptly named 'Home Guard.' Dom looks him over suspiciously as he passes but otherwise Marcus escapes relatively unscathed. Then he follows them in through the doors and gets a good look at the bar. Logan has a Gear in a brutal arm lock, pressing the man's face into the bar top and snarling what must be threats into their ear with gleefully sadistic abandon. Even from the other side of the room Marcus can tell that, see it in the slight upwards turn to Logan's lips as he speaks, the lack of real tension in his body.

Dizzy collars another Gear and asks what happened. Awed even by one of Delta's friendlier members, the soldier babbles on about how the man being threatened called the newcomer a runt and asked if he thought he was scary, wandering around in black armour like that. Dizzy lets the Gear go. Marcus debates whether to get involved but before he can make a decision Logan releases the man with a little push to make sure he stumbles and almost trips up. Baird makes a beeline for their normal table as their comrade picks up the alcohol off the bar top and heads over.

Marcus takes one of the pints, as do Baird, Dom and Cole. Satisfied with his prediction of Logan's social drinking habits, he watches the man's throat convulse as he tosses a measure of whiskey back as if it was water. Recollections of what else Logan has swallowed recently stir and he refocuses on his pint, readying himself for a few hours of trying to keep Baird relatively sober and trying not to lose his mind to the booze and the gutter. It's times like these that he wishes he'd managed to keep his high tolerance for spirits from the Slab where distilled vodka made from things like chair legs was the normal fare. Seeing Logan's throat stretch as he tilts his head back again, another measure going down smoothly, he shifts in his chair, gets comfortable and starts counting how many minutes it takes Baird to finish his pint and the seconds that constitute the space between him doing so and going to replace the finished beverage.

By pint 2, Baird is mouthing off about another division loudly, with Cole joking around over by the bar with a few Gears he once served with. Dizzy and Logan are in the middle of a drinking competition and Dom is playing at referee. Dizzy downs the _n_th shot of moonshine and sways in his chair, Logan laughs and leans forward, taunting him with the possibility of falling off and losing the money wagered. Dizzy slams the shot glass down on the table and demands that they carry on drinking now, before he does fall over. It's at that point that Marcus notices the Gear from earlier lead a posse of his mates over towards them, drunken rage printed on their features. Dom spots them too and Baird, traipsing back from the bar with his next two pints, swears at them as he passes in front of them to reach his seat.

"Hey runt." Crowing in laughter at Dizzy's defeat, Logan stops like a paused CD. He turns his head to tipsily stare up at the Gears behind him.

"Yeah, what? You decide you need a new face after all?" The brazen words, are, to Marcus, fuelled by alcohol and having seen Logan throwing back whiskey and moonshine in equal measure, he's unsure as to whether Logan can back them up.

"No, but you need to come outside for a minute." The Gear states. Logan pretends to consider, swirling the moonshine in his glass with the tip of one finger.

"Nah, it's too cold out." The Gear rests his hand on Logan's right shoulder.

"You're coming outside."

"Get your hand off me." Is the sharp reply. The Gear brings his other hand up into the light and as Marcus sees the knife his own hand goes to where his pistol should be, wanting to shoot down the idiot that tries to hurt Logan. But as his hand brushes air and the Gear goes to bring the blade to bear, Logan is already moving. Marcus can track the motions but they are blurred, sometimes too fast to see at all. Logan clamps his left hand on the one gripping his shoulder, stands and flips the man onto his back on the table. Glass shatters. With his other hand, no longer swirling the contents around, he grabs the shot glass, ducks the wild haymaker of the man directly behind the Gear and slams the glass into his left shoulder, staggering him before following up with a right jab to the eye that knocks him out completely.

Marcus remains untouched by the chaos that erupts as that second man hits the floor, Dom is soon swept up in the fray and Dizzy and Baird leap at the chance to black some eyes in a bar fight. But even when Cole wades in, Marcus watches Logan laughing all the while as he lays into anyone he can in the free-for-all melee. Even sticking to basic brawling moves, in such a mundane place as the 'Home Guard' he looks like poetry in motion. The embodiment of the flowing words and profound imagery Marcus studied at school, read at home and can still remember. He can't tear his eyes away. The fights in the Slab were always more bloody, more intrinsically violent and Marcus has always been glad no-one really knows what went inside, because he's half-hoping the aftermath of this brawl is like the aftermaths of the skirmishes in prison.

Logan grins, as smug as any cream-fed feline. He cracks his neck as Dom finally manages to unlock the door so Cole and Logan can drop Dizzy on the bed. That done, Logan bids them a good night airily and heads off to the room he now shares with Marcus. The door opens near-silently and he slips in without announcing his presence. Not that it makes any difference because he knows Marcus is going to be sitting on the bed, waiting. The scent of the man as they picked themselves up after the fight told him that, as well as informed him of how well-behaved Marcus was in the Slab.

It takes Logan a minute or two to lose the armour and boots but before he can strip the shirt and trousers off, Marcus is up behind him, already erect and tearing the clothes over his head. Logan laughs as he turns around and grabs the taller man's chin to get a kiss out of him first off.

"Eager, aren't we?" He teases as he slides his belt out of the loops and throws it on the bed, the trousers and pants following. Marcus says nothing but nips at his lower lip in admonishment of the comment. Logan ups the ante and brushes his free hand over Marcus's cloth-covered erection; the man almost jumps but manages to summon the thought needed to lose his own remaining clothes instead. Marcus begins to move them back towards his bed and Logan lets him but, expecting the move, sweeps Marcus' feet out from underneath him when he tries to swing them around so that Logan falls first. Logan grins at the scene before him.

"Maybe next time, sunshine." He climbs on top of Marcus, drinking in the sight, sound and scent of him. Marcus growls in impatience. Logan looks up at him and winks. The forthcoming second growl changes into a groan as Logan teases a nipple with his teeth, laps at it with his rough tongue. Switching to the other he plays with that too, then counters Marcus' attempt to grab his hips by pinning both hands over his head and using his adamantium-increased body weight to pin the man to the bed. He grinds his hips down roughly of his own accord and then when Marcus tilts his head back in another moan, latches on to the skin beneath his ear and sucks hard enough to leave a mark. He changes to the other ear and then tries the spot where neck gives in to shoulder. Marcus recovers himself enough to snarl impatience again at him however, and having toyed with the man's skin enough for the moment, Logan grabs a quick, brutal kiss and crawls down his body, running his hands down Marcus' sides to grip his hips.

He gently sucks on the tip of Marcus' erection, not wanting to do anything but to wreak a little exquisite torture. As soon as Marcus reaches down to force him into more effective action, he lets him go, sucking on the inside of his leg until he's almost bucking in need at having Logan toy with him so wantonly. Logan laughs, a low rumble of shadow-dark amusement that he knows will go straight to Marcus' already straining cock. He pushes himself up to rest his weight on his elbows for a moment, content to observe the panting, groaning man for a minute before scooting up again and tapping Marcus' chin with one blunt finger. Marcus glares at him, obviously preferring to top, but obliges and opens his mouth anyway. Logan bites back a groan himself at the sensation of the sergeant's tongue sliding up and down against his fingers, slickening the rough skin.

Satisfied with the result, Logan returns to his previous spot and inserts one finger into Marcus, stretching the ring of muscles and letting the man adjust to the slight intrusion before adding a second.

"Shiiiiiiiit…." Marcus grinds out hoarsely, Logan bends his fingers and the word disintegrates into another incoherent jumble of sound. He grins and slowly inserts the third finger, Marcus does buck now, an instinctive reaction to the feeling and a want for deeper sensation.

"Can you fit four?" Logan murmurs.

"Yes," Marcus hisses, barely able to talk at all. Logan crooks his three fingers and revels in the effect it has, the effect _he_ is having on this pokerfaced, law-abiding sergeant. He scissors his fingers for a short span, searching all the while for the bundle of nerves that will break Marcus' still-holding restraint in two. At the fourth finger, Marcus lets out a breathless whine at the discomfort and then, when Logan drags his tongue up the underside of his cock and touches his prostate simultaneously, almost screams. Logan growls in satisfaction, a possessive surety that he can cause his man more pleasure than anyone else. He slides his fingers out slowly and positions himself quickly.

Marcus screams properly, well aware that he's rarely - if ever – had sex this good, and more than happy to undergo Logan's sadistic bit of torture again if the man is willing to do this to him afterwards. He clamps on to the mutant's hips, meets every thrust and holds on for dear life, high on the feelings blazing through his body as Logan thrusts over and over, as sweaty as Marcus is and blue eyes half-way there to glowing with the intensity of his gaze. Marcus howls again and is slightly gratified to hear Logan begin snarling with each thrust, muscles taunt and the tendons of his neck rigid with the tension. In between surges of pleasure, Marcus wonders if he can be bothered to top when he could get this instead. The thought drowns in a flood of ecstasy and Marcus then ponders as to whether Logan will let him. Then he gives up thought entirely and lets the tsunami of heat pull him under.

Logan frees a hand up and begins to fist Marcus in time to his rapidly accelerating rhythm. Marcus lasts all of a handful of seconds longer and comes, clamping down internally on the sensations to prolong the moment. Logan follows suit an instant later, lunging up to sink his teeth into Marcus' shoulder as he does so, biting down hard enough to draw blood but to Marcus all that exists are the aftershocks rocking his system and thus the flash of pain is lost in the deluge.

Panting, trembling as Logan pulls out and collapses besides him, Marcus takes a while to stare up at the off-white ceiling as he recovers. The irony of Dom being concerned about them returning to base and therefore encountering Anya in person and Marcus then sleeping with their new squad mate - who is so very blatantly male – once they return, makes him smile. Logan shifts onto his back and then props himself up on one arm to look Marcus over. Marcus raises an eyebrow and Logan raises one back, grinning smugly.

"What's so funny?" Logan near-whispers, voice gravelly.

"Dom was worried I'd get depressed or something seeing Anya again, especially after we almost died in the Riftworm." Logan stares at him incredulously and then bursts out into exhausted but heartfelt laughter as he drops back onto the bed. Marcus lets himself smile at the sound. A twinge at the joint of his shoulders and neck brings his fingers up to touch the spot. They come away red, and Marcus furrows his brows.

"Did you bite me?" He asks. Logan stops laughing.

"Ah, sorry 'bout that. I guess it's part of being a feral, but yeah, I do that sometimes." He mutters in apology.

"Feral as in animal?" Marcus confirms.

"Yeah."

"As in a mark of ownership?" He then utters. Logan goes tense.

"Yeah. Sor-"

"Don't be sorry." Logan raises himself up again to meet Marcus' eyes at the firm words. The Gear continues. "Don't be sorry, I don't mind. If I'm honest, that was some of the best sex I've had in years and I have no problems with repeating the experience." Logan stares at him for a second then smirks.

"I ain't likely to fuck off anywhere anytime soon, you up for that?"

"Yeah." And once again Logan drops back. Conversation over and with nothing more to be said, Marcus turns the lights off and nudges him to turn over and face the wall so he can spoon up behind him, one arm draped over the shorter man's hips. As times passes, sleep tugging at him insistently, he becomes aware of a deep rumble reverberating through Logan and buzzing in the air like muted thunder.

"Are you… Are you _purring?"_ The sound breaks as Logan mock-growls at him.

"Yeah I am, alright? Now fuck off. Tell anyone and I will kill you, I've got a reputation to keep here." Marcus exhales a breath of amusement but doesn't say anything more. Logan eventually resumes and Marcus gathers that it's more of a subconscious action that not as the rolling sound and warm body beside him lulls him to sleep.

He bristles with irritation as the dim pre-dawn light trickling in through the window wakes him up. The fact that he is now even more entangled with Logan reminds him of the night before and the reaction would be almost welcomed were it not for the fact that Marcus had gone years without beforehand and the dull ache resting at the base of his spine is enough of a minor discomfort to prevent any repeat performances for the day. He wants to curse in defiance of the fact.

"Sore?" Logan murmurs, his voice sleep-softened but still containing an edge of enjoyment at Marcus' hiss of breath as he makes the mistake of moving.

"Yeah." Logan rolls over and sprawls shamelessly on the bed as Marcus climbs out stiffly, the Gear looks him over and Logan just looks right back, pokerfaced.

"Communal showers?" The man enquires, Marcus nods and grabs some clothes from a drawer and pulls on a loose pair of tracksuit trousers and a scruffy t-shirt, heading out the door to get showered and dressed. He hears Logan slump back onto the mattress as he closes the door behind him and grins inside.

Once they are both showered and back in their armour, Marcus offers to give Logan a tour of the training facilities with regards to spending the day testing the mutant's skills before inserting back into hostile ground. Logan accepts, on the condition that they drop by the supply depot on the way to collect his Stetson's replacement from the Quartermaster. Crossing the concrete to the warehouse, Marcus clocks multiple curious looks and a few glares from those he recognises as friends of the Gear Logan threatened and beat up in the 'Home Guard,' but like the target of the varying looks he doesn't acknowledge their existence for the time being and simply heads to the depot's doors as if he wasn't walking around with the only black-ops Gear alive. A hint of pride, he realises, infuses the thought now that he has been assured of Logan's ability to cope with the dangers it might bring him.

The Quartermaster gives Marcus his usual scowl but actually exchanges niceties with Logan. Marcus watches the exchange carefully, observing how Logan talks to the old veteran easily, as if the two were friends and not just new business acquaintances. Eventually the old man produces a black Stetson out from under the work top, and shows it to Logan, pointing out the reappearance of the black composite material, again a woven form to give it the flex found in hats while retaining the durability, and also the small black stiletto sheathed inside as well as the other small blades secured inside the hat and also behind the hatband. After extracting another promise to return and give the lab boys feedback in person on their innovations, the Quartermaster lets them go and Marcus leads the way to the training areas.

"Marcus!" Comes the call as they enter the gymnasium, often called the Arena due to the almost constant sparring and close-quarters combat training that happens under its roof. Bernadette Mataki, strides around the matches taking place and makes a beeline for Marcus and Logan with Cole, Baird, Dom and Dizzy trailing along in her wake, all four men sporting the glazed eyes and permanent scowls of the hung-over. Marcus would wager that she's being loud on purpose, he would have seen her there straight away, there was no need to call him. To his side, Logan chuckles, evidently following the same train of thought. Bernie reaches them and bypasses Marcus entirely, going straight to square up in front of Logan and take his measure.

"So you're the one who killed a Berserker alone, then?" Marcus notices the entire hall go quiet in order to eavesdrop.

"Yeah." Bernie looks sceptical.

"How?"

"With tonnes of sharp stone going at hundreds of miles per hour. Works on most things." Logan shrugs as if it was the obvious answer. Having been on the receiving end of Mataki's interrogations before, Marcus knows it's a bit harder to do so than the man is making it out to be.

"What's your name?" She asks, still sceptically eyeing his lack of height and black armour.

"Logan."

"Right, I want to test your close-quarters combat skills. You know the basics of sparring?" She demands. Baird winces at the volume whilst Dizzy just looks like he's about to collapse. Logan nods in acquiescence to the disguised command and leaves his guns, knives and hat with Marcus and follows Bernie into the middle of the room, the rest of the trainers now stopping their activities to form an audience around the two.

Logan cracks his neck and goes through the motions of macho-posturing to imply a lack of skill but inflated ego. Bernie just loosens up and falls into combat stance. One of the onlookers steps up and counts them in from three. For a second, nothing happens and then Bernie closes the gap suddenly and goes for a haymaker right to cover the left uppercut that would end any low-level fighter. Logan sways to one side, snakes a hand out to grip her right wrist and tugs as she abandons the uppercut and tries to sweep his legs out from underneath him, surprised by the calmness and cold skill shown. He releases her wrist and dives to the side, rolling to come up behind her and before she can turn around fully, grabs her left wrist, raises it and twists, placing her in an arm lock with one hand and clamping the other around the back of her neck.

"Fuck." She swears but doesn't struggle. He waits for a beat and then lets her go, trying hard not to smile. She glares at him. "Why posture like a fool when you've that kind of skill?"

"Because then you underestimate me as a short guy with an ego but no skill to back it up." She stares at him hard for a second and then bursts into laughter. She faces the gathered watchers.

"Alright, I just made an idiot of myself, now clear off back to work!" The crowd disperses, many smiling broadly at the admission. Bernie glares at them as they fall back to whatever they were doing and then turns to Marcus as he leads the rest of Delta up.

"Could of told me was some kind of martial artist, Marcus. I would've lasted more than a second then!" She accuses him, hands on her hips. She grins and shakes her head, "oh well, at least you've finally got a hand-to-hand expert in your squad on a permanent basis. I'll see you when you get back." She claps Baird on the back as she leaves. Logan smirks to see the blond wince and mentally thanks his healing factor for sparing him from the agony of hangovers.

"You any good at pure martial arts?" Asks one observer, and while Logan detects a faint tremor in his voice, he has to like the guy for daring to ask.

"Yeah and I don't mind sparring either." The Gear looks surprised by his pre-emptive words but steps up nevertheless. Logan tries hard not to grin as the younger man lashes out immediately with a high kick. Let the thrashings commence.

Marcus has given up counting how many 'sparring matches' Logan has won, although the words 'sparring match' imply that the fools lining up to 'train' with the short man have a chance of actually landing a hit on him, or possibly even lasting over a minute. The last candidate for a beating lands on the mat with a smack and stays there. Logan, however, strolls off the mat and towards Marcus and Dom, sitting on chairs and watching the slaughter, having done their own sparring and combat training hours ago. Marcus watches a bead of sweat slide down the side of Logan's face and disappear into the stubble lining his jaw. The man isn't, he notices, that sweaty, in fact he's barely breathing hard. Admirable considering that fact that he hasn't stopped taking the feet out from under seasoned Gears in hours, most of the day really.

Logan saunters over, arrogance filling every movement. He picks his stuff up from beside the chairs and slings the gun belts over his shoulder and returns his Stetson to its rightful place. Marcus levers himself out of the chair and Dom follows, the three head back to the barracks, looking to turn in early before redeploying the next day. Marcus catches himself wishing they had another spare night and berates himself for the instant's selfishness, all the while watching Logan walk ahead of him, completely unconcerned with the looks being sent his way or the vast amount of energy he must have expended.

"There a mess hall 'round here?" The mutant asks suddenly. Marcus blinks, he'd forgotten about food. Dom perks up at the words.

"Yeah, we can just go straight there." He leads the way to the hall, eager to eat in the hopes that sustenance will bury the remnants of his hangover once and for all. Marcus follows at a slightly more sedate pace than his corporal's fast walk. Logan falls in at his side but stays silent, feeling no need to engage in trivial small talk. Marcus is glad, he's never been one for making idle conversation. The doors to the mess open, releasing a waft of warm air into the rapidly cooling evening. Logan makes a beeline for the queue of people getting food and joins Dom there, Marcus signals that he's going to get a space at the long tables and leaves his chances of getting food resting on Dom's conscientious shoulders. The talking increases with volume at the sight of Delta's most infamous members and the presence of the new, black-clothed Gear with them. Marcus disdains to listen to most of it, knowing full well how much soldiers will gossip given the chance.

"You heard what they're all saying?" Dom asks as he deposits a plate of steaming hot food in front of Marcus. Marcus shakes his head and gets straight to eating.

"Apparently I'm a Stranded gang chief that's seen the error of his ways, an Islander martial-arts master who has decided to join the war effort at long last, a psycho pulled out of a secret prison for the extremely and most dangerous criminally insane convicts, or, and I like this one, a cyborg creation of the tech boys designed to kill anything and assigned to Delta squad to kill you all and make it look like an accident." Logan fills him in before tucking into his meal himself. Dom takes over.

"And that's just the half-sane stuff. You should have heard the one where Baird has finally cracked the secret to human cloning and Logan's a super-human resulting from the process. Or the one where you and Bernie had a kid and Logan's your long lost son. I mean, I know Gears like to talk but some of it's really bad, I mean, Baird? Cloning people?" Marcus smiles, he knows Logan's something akin to the ultimate soldier and he knows the man has proved it time and time again in the space of days, but a cyborg? Now that's just stupid.

Conversation continues for a while, minor things and nothing is said that has any particular importance. As the evening rush in the mess hall dies away and the three men clear their plates Marcus feels the weight of responsibility, the burden of protecting the lives of Delta squad, creep up on him again and he knows that by the time he wakes up tomorrow, checks his weapons for the final time before he reaches the King Raven, the mantle of sergeant will once more be firmly settled on his shoulders. Some days he resents it, others he just lives with it. Only when he stands in the midst of still-warm Locust corpses and his commands have saved lives, does the role ever seem to be something to be craved, fought for, _wanted_.

They disperse back to their rooms in the barracks, Logan takes his shower first and then Marcus goes to the communal bathroom after he has returned. When he gets back to the room, Logan is in Marcus' bed, stretched out and looking at him, not with raging lust or passion but a quiet concern, a worry and care that Marcus wants to hate him for showing. Instead he just finishes getting his things ready for deployment and slides under the covers besides the other man, spooning up behind him again, the last night he'll be able to share any sense of proximity with anyone. The warmth from Logan's broad back sends him into oblivion faster than the mental exercises he normally uses before missions. The irony isn't lost on him.

Logan wakes up before Marcus, and having seen the sergeant's internal alarm clock in action, that's not as easy as it's said. He doesn't move straight away, not wanting to disturb the man behind him. He's trapped between an easily-awakened soldier and a wall. Logan grins, it's a challenge to say the least. Slow, subtle movements, the likes of which ninja-in-training will spend years learning the basics of, get him out and free to move once more. A few minutes and the armour is on, the thin gloves with the very tips of the fingers cut off worn under the bracers and the strip of cloth wrapped around his neck, a thick weave that he'll pull up to just under his eyes when stealth is the ultimate objective. He tugs it up over his nose and pulls the brim of the Stetson down a little. He would do well to avoid being seen on the way to this little rendezvous.

No-one sees him, computerised surveillance and security systems miss him by miles, or millimetres, to him it's all the same. Logan slips into Prescott's office with none the wiser. The Chairman looks up, jerks his eyes up from his papers as Logan's footsteps suddenly become audible to him, the mutant slides out of the shadows, enjoying the fear the politician is masking admirably well, but his scent undermines the effort.

"What did you want me for?" He enquires, blandly but softly, a low whisper of threat.

"I'd like you to consider something." Prescott proposes, carefully.

"Consider what?"

"I have reason to believe that, while the rest of Delta is deploying to an old secret research facility, there is another facility in the mountains nearby. Small, underground, I suspect and excellently hidden."

"And?" Logan presses.

"I would like you to deploy with Delta today, but stay on the Raven when you reach the destination. You will then be flown to the general area we know the facility to be located in and dropped off. Find the place, get what information and equipment you can from there and then contact Command for further instructions." Logan cocks his head to the side and mulls the idea over.

"You're going to have me live behind enemy lines, in Locust territory unless this information is worth bringing straight back home ASAP, aren't you?" Prescott fidgets and Logan latches on to the fragment of sound and movement as a weakness. "This facility, I'm guessing, was looking into, not the Locust, but experimental weaponry. A war like this, I'm going to say bio-weaponry and chemical warfare as well as the really extreme stuff that had to be kept more hush-hush than the rest of the secret research." Logan moves a few paces forwards, to stand just before Prescott's desk. "I'll do it, on the understanding that this is all kept under wraps, no-one else is involved and I can tell Fenix that I'm on a black op spec job." He pauses.

"Oh, and don't try and pull the wool over my eyes or play me, Chairman. I figure that you're using me as anything other than black ops or Special Forces and I will take it into my head to make your existence hell. Just to clarify: that means no killing Stranded and witnesses, I ain't your assassin." Prescott says nothing but having had the terms and conditions of his own command dictated to him in a soft, steely-sharp whisper, fear and anger roll off him in waves. Logan smiles behind the cloth covering his face.

The door clicks mutedly as he leaves and by the time Marcus has finally woken up, Logan is sitting on his own bed, watching the sergeant rouse himself. The Gear freezes as he realises Logan isn't in the bed anymore.

"Over here." Logan states, dryly. Marcus rolls onto his back and looks at him, surprised by his absence.

"Woke up early, decided to get ready so I could double check everything in time."

"Really?" Marcus asks. Logan shrugs nonchalantly.

"Nah. Well, not the end part. Had to try though, didn't I?" He favours the sergeant with a bitterly amused look. "Prescott wants me to go look around a secret research facility while the rest of you carry on with the original mission, I'm likely to end up staying in hostile territory for a while and it's all shadow ops, no paper trail, nothing. I'm telling you because if you need me, I went and talked to the tech boys on the way back from Preskie's office and channel 394 on the comms is now mine. Feel free to touch bases when you want or need to, I'm probably going to be skulking around the back-end of nowhere for weeks once I've checked this base out. The others can't know anything, I'm telling you because someone needs to know and because Preskie is happy to accept a few terms and conditions if it means I go all stealth, ghost operative for him."

Marcus sits up, his mind now running at full speed, processing another of the bombshells of information Logan knows he seems to love springing on the man at every possible opportunity.

"What happens once this mission is done then?" He asks.

"Oh, either Preskie sends out a Raven for me or he pretends I got 'lost' and avoids anyone finding out what I dug up in this facility he's 'found' that way. In which case I walk back here and spill my guts to any and everyone. Simple really."

"Is it? Could you make it back?" Marcus demands, "how do you know that what is in this facility isn't still dangerous? You could die."

"Prescott wants me to do black ops but he can't just keep me to the side 'specially. He's making no secret of his intentions so everyone knows I'm your new black ops force. Meaning he can have me do only so much. If I want to, need to or feel he's lost the plot, I can put my foot down and stamp all over his little 'special forces, secret police' wet dreams in an instant. If I didn't have that option, I wouldn't have said yes. But I did because I do and because he want's what's at the place he's sending you too, but he is desperate for whatever's in this other facility."

Logan watches Marcus piece it all together.

"Channel 394?" He confirms. Logan nods and the case is closed. Left unsaid, Logan will go and be a professional, emotionless killer for Prescott and Marcus will tell no-one, just listen and understand that like he must be a sergeant, Logan must be a killer. They must do their jobs and if they can, stop each other and themselves from _becoming_ their jobs, from living and breathing war so much that they become the endless carnage and violence.

Marcus gets ready for the mission the same as he always does, Logan watches him go through the motions. More than an hour before they need to be, the two men are waiting in the corridor for Dom and Dizzy to finish getting ready so they can go and collect Cole and Baird and be waiting for Hoffman to brief them early.


	8. Redeployment

Marcus listens intently to Hoffman's words, studies the maps and the data and has already compiled a likely game plan for once they reach the facility. But the thought of what is happening already nags at him, not the concept of Logan going on shady missions with no-one else but Marcus, Prescott and Hoffman the wiser, but the thought that it start immediately. No pause, no break, no chance to acclimatise to the war and its parameters, just thrust straight into the deep end without a light, simply told 'you can cope just fine.' It angers Marcus, grates on his nerves. He saw what happened to Carmine when he was assigned to Delta, young and inexperienced, having joined up after his elder brother died. Also with Delta squad.

Logan is more than capable of looking after himself, Marcus knows that like he knows Dom's limits, Baird's, Cole's, Dizzy's and his own. But he knows how twisted black-ops agents can get, met plenty in the Slab who'd lost all pretences of sanity to deep insertion behind enemy lines and the strain of _killkillkill_ all the time. However capably Logan thinks he can deal with the pressure, Marcus doesn't want to have to see him become one of those unstable operatives who get locked up or put down when they lose the plot altogether.

The time rolls around and then the pilots are prepping the Raven and Delta squad are loaded on board, waiting to go. Marcus watches Logan immediately pull his hat down and stretch out, looking like he is attempting to carry on sleeping. The hand resting on his thigh is placed casually but one finger runs along the blade of the top throwing knife over and over again, back and forth. Marcus blinks at what could be a sign of tension from the normally relaxed mutant and changes to staring at the world outside the King Raven from take-off until they land at the edges of the forest encompassing the facility and the surrounding area.

Everyone except Marcus looks back at the Raven in confusion as it takes off again, Logan still 'asleep' in it. Marcus keeps his eyes to the front and confines his mind to thinking about the mission ahead of him.

Hours later, on their way through the woodland to the facility entrance, Marcus stops as his earpiece crackles with static from an incoming connection.

"Be seeing you around, sarg. Hold it together willya?" Logan's voice rumbles even in a haze of electrical noise.

"Keep with it, runt." He replies before cutting the link. He smiles very faintly.

_There had been a small circle of ex-special forces in the Slab, people who'd 'lost it' so bad that they were locked up to die in there. Marcus had spoken to one or two of them in his time there, heard the odd story about them; about how they were insane, as mental as possible, but kept acting sane and normal most of the time because that way they could, when insanity wasn't required, almost _**be**_ sane._

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><p><strong>That's the end of Hostile Territory! Thank you if you've read this far and for those who want to know, as of 2411/12, the sequel is up!**_  
><em>


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